9 Strategies for Motivating (HIGH SCHOOL) Students in Mathematics

[Jim Horn]

Math in engineering college was frustrating - Wronskians, matrices, partial differentials, conformal mapping - all were taught as magical incantations that one had to do in a particular and seemingly randomly chosen way to get the correct answer. Then the next semester that same math was used to analyze electrostatic fields, Maxwell's equations, stress and strain in structures, etc. Then the math acquired a mental image of what it "really meant" rather than the somewhat mindless manipulation of symbols in accordance with seemingly arbitrary rules.

So, yes, math for its own sake is excellent. But understanding why the rules are what they are and having examples of applications can make a huge difference in learning, at least for me. Perhaps I'm weird that way...