Success or Failure in the Mathematical Education of the Child

Abstract

Mathematics—the word that hides immense emotions. Probably each of us has some memories and associations related to mathematical education at school age. For some it was a pleasure, sometimes, when they delved into solving logical and difficult tasks, ending with pride and success. For others, learning mathematics was a nightmare they would prefer to forget, lost and sad time, marked by a streak of failures, often with a sense of inferiority. And it is the latter experience, which makes some people assume a priori that learning mathematics must be difficult, and perceive it as a cause of failure. The scale of the phenomenon is so large that in the literature we can find such terms as the scourge of mathematical illiteracy (Dąbrowski 2008), mainly blamed on teachers who failed to properly shape mathematical concepts in the minds of children (Karpińska, Remża 2019).