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As mentioned in the article, even teachers can pass on their math anxiety to students (especially female elementary school teachers to their female students).

• jschwartzi 11y ago
  This reminds me of a story one of the math professors at the university I attended told once. He said he was standing in a class teaching the Math for Elementary Educators class, when someone asked him why they needed to know 8th grade mathematics. Apparently the elementary school teachers in my state are qualified to teach up to 8th grade, and so he needed to make sure they actually knew 8th grade math.
• sethammons 11y ago
  This rings so true for me. My 4th grade teacher took two weeks of "teaching" fractions. Afterwards, she breathed a sigh of relief and said we can now go back to decimals. I avoided "getting" fractions until I was in 2nd semester calculus in high school. I would change all fractions to decimals, solve the problems, and convert the decimals to fractions (since the teacher wanted answers in fractions). Crazy, right? When the lightbulb finally went on, suddenly everything got a lot easier just working with fractions. I took this so much to heart that my daughter was taught exclusively with fractions at first, and only later moved on to decimals. Believe it or not, she actually had trouble grasping decimals at first due to her fraction exposure.