Mathematics: A Powerful life skill but not life assessment subject
Suppose, if mathematics ever evaluated life, it would ask every student what percentage they got in the 10th or 12th grade exams. It wouldn’t matter if a movie star failed the 12th grade, because there’s no such thing as pass, fail, or percentage in the arts. But a mathematics student is often considered a pride, a genius or a crown jewel, and is considered superior to students in other disciplines. It is mathematics that convinces every parent that their children, exposed to this subject, can make their futures brighter and more radiant by calculating time and distance in the realms of unitary laws and calculus. Even if they are naturally gifted, society only believes that the trajectory of a student’s life’s journey and trajectory is correct when it sees them charting their destiny through geometrical angles. And so is everything that student adopts, because counting is more useful than feeling.
Perhaps, in the future, mathematics will be joined by physics and chemistry, who will argue that when a student, obsessed with numbers and formulas, reaches adulthood, he will perhaps learn to calculate the square root of his own and his relationships through algebra. After all, what’s the harm in believing that?
Everything is mathematics. All sciences and all arts come after it. Even if these try to come before mathematics, it’s impossible to ignore mathematics, because it is life’s expectation of life.
It’s another matter that, as soon as we leave college, mathematics and its companions, like relatives, stand on the fringes of society, with their ruthlessness and superiority, while the joy of life’s relationships, understanding life’s purpose, and questions of humanity are relegated to other subjects. Yes, mathematics returns with its superiority and fills every square on the balance sheet.
See Also: School is not the only place where children can learn
While many students achieve a 100 percentile on the JEE Main, some consider their 98 percentile to be insufficient. Because other social science and arts subjects are no longer relevant to students, the trap of percentages convinces them that they missed out by two percent, and at a young age, they missed out on everything that should have been more important to them. But amids student’s frustration, confusion and suicides, the exam and result percentages, with their roar, render useless all those who fell short of the 100 percentile. Even the Prime Minister advises against this percentage, yet the rigor of the exam remains unresolved. In our education system, it’s beyond comprehension what the JEE Main exam wants from students. I wonder what glorious life story it intends to write with such a difficult paper and the 100 percentile question. What’s more, by the time students reach the JEE Advanced stage, they’re divided into countless factions. Some are driven by percentage, some by reservation, some by the regret of missing out on an IIT, and some by the lost sense of superiority that comes with taking the JEE Main.
In their struggle to master mathematics and science, students fail to understand that when their relatives surround them in the Kurukshetra of life and ask what their ranking was in the Mains and Advanced exams, where will they find the logic of social science, literature, and philosophy to answer those questions. For them, the questions are now made so difficult, as if the walls of IIT already want to intensify their heat, making them even more rigid and tuneless in life. If this is not so, then why are these exams so terrifying that students rush to coaching institutes to achieve percentages and percentiles? Those students, with pale faces, confused minds, and trapped in the trap of dreams, are warned that if they miss even one coaching class, they lose their life, their dreams, and their mechanical commitment. Children who run away from class at jet speed are advised to cling to the coaching walls like Spiderman.
From January to April-May, millions of people stand on the shore, eager to cross that river, that ocean, each marked by some coaching institute. Parents also stand there, already instilled by society’s desire to believe that only the talented take the JEE, and those who endure the separation from mathematics continue their journey, honoring mathematics, to reach the goal of NEET. Those with reservations are also in this crowd, and those who have nothing are also striving to achieve everything. In such a situation, a two percent decrease is tantamount to failure. Therefore, that student must have given such a low score to his life.
Schools teach enough to lay a solid foundation for children. After all, how can a student, following the path of percentages, understand that life and its achievements are not just about marks. Life is a philosophy of feeling. It is the art of connection, which takes mathematics into the social world of relationships. Percentages become a hundred only when other social subjects explain that living each day happily and peacefully requires reaching out to each other, and that cannot be achieved through percentages.
What JEE, NEET, or UPSC can’t explain is that struggle is necessary, but ultimately, the purpose of life is to live. The philosophy of life is nonviolence, not some suffocating exam. These exams must understand that at the age of sixteen or seventeen, the tenderness of tender children is not tested so harshly. They are not made to wither so much. They are the future, they must be nurtured. If life is mathematics, then they should have 360-degree personality development. They should understand that in the hustle and bustle of relationships and needs, life becomes a philosophy that teaches us to preserve that one or two percent amidst all the difficulties. And then that mathematical “let’s accept it” also proves that struggle, that knowledge, that philosophy of life.
