Maths is not engaging for students  Maths is one of the least engaging subjects taught at school. Subjects like chemistry are full of flashes, fires and experiments which help people see what they’re being taught in front of them. History starts with telling stories, and even though that’s not what the subject is really about, it offers a window into it. By contrast, maths has almost nothing similar. Asking children to use trigonometry to find the height of a tree does not fool them – all they see is another triangle. Some people enjoy it, but many do not.  Forcing people through maths classes which they find boring and irrelevant will only put them off maths; a recent study found that motivation was the most important factor for improving maths grades. [1] This in turn makes their children less likely to study maths, and causes a cycle in which a large section of the population have as little to do with maths as they can. [2]  It would be much better to not make these people study maths. True, they would end up not knowing any more than the bare essentials, but this is better than making them hate it.  [1] Ghose, Tia, ‘Like Math? Thank Your Motivation, Not IQ’, Scientific American, 28 December 2012,   [2] Kreutzer, Laura, ‘Our Child Hates Math. Is It Our Fault?’, The Wall Street Journal, 14 April 2013,