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One of my parents’ favourite sayings when I was growing up was, “Success doesn’t fall from the sky.” As a child, this is the last thing one wants to hear. You want to hear that the world is your oyster, that everything will fall into your lap, that life will be a feast, and that success, money and joy will be yours effortlessly and unconditionally.
So, you tend to roll your eyes when a parent tells you that success doesn’t fall from the sky. Because, you tell yourself, of course it will. Of course you won’t need to put in all that effort. Life doesn’t need to be so hard as they would make it. You just need to believe in achieving success and it will all come to you effortlessly.
Well, I grew up, and as I grew older, the truth of my parents’ saying stayed with me. In fact, it became increasingly relevant as I grew older. In school, I had to work hard – and had to keep working hard – to get good marks. I never got to experience any version of a highway to success by sitting back and getting good results anyway.
After school, this also applied to my studies and my work. Every time I stopped doing my part because I felt I could let go and relax and have success descend upon me effortlessly for a change, like rays of sunshine, quite the opposite happened. Each time, I would find myself sliding backwards, slowly but surely, down the slippery slope of mediocrity, further and further away from where I actually wanted to be.
It seems that success is indeed all about doing your part and pulling your weight – even when things become difficult. Even when you don’t get it right on the first go. Even when you struggle. Even when you get disheartened and tired and just want to give up. Even when you want to throw things in frustration because you try and try and try and you still can’t get it right.
The thing is, in life, things are not always easy. At times, you will struggle. Sometimes, you will want to give up. But if you do, you won’t achieve success – at least not in the matter at hand. It is as simple as that. Because how can you succeed if you don’t even try, and if you don’t keep trying?
If you do persevere, though, your chances of achieving success increase exponentially.
And that is why I don’t understand why parents of Maths learners should often say, “I don’t want my child to struggle, so he should rather drop Maths,” or “What if my child struggles with Maths? Perhaps she should rather drop Maths now, just in case.”
Ma’am, sir, unfortunately your child will sometimes struggle. But remember that the main purpose of school is to prepare your child for life. And in life, your child will sometimes struggle. It is simply unavoidable.
But there is no subject better than Maths to teach a child about the value of hard work and perseverance, despite – let’s face it – quite often experiencing disappointments along the way. Because even though you might work hard, things do sometimes go wrong (just like they do in real life) and your results might not always be what you’d hoped.It is not only about the actual Maths your child learns. It is also about what the subject of Maths teaches your child about life. To my mind, this is what is most important about taking Maths as a subject.
In this regard, the most important benefit of taking Maths is that it teaches you how to persevere despite the possible disappointment of not achieving success immediately, how to keep on trying even if you keep getting it wrong, and how to push away those insistent little claws of stress, despondency and despair doing their best to make you give up.
Because this sort of thing will certainly happen in real life too: in your job and career, in your relationships, in your sports, and in your personal life. There will always be all sorts of things standing in the way of your success.
And in real life, we do need to know how to get up and get on, no matter how difficult it might be.
