Mathematics education has traditionally emphasized the worst face of mathematics. Students are taught many mathematical facts, but they are rarely taught what the “mathematics process” is and how to employ it. As a result, engineers and scientists today often do not know how to use mathematics, and the population as a whole has failed to understand the relevance of mathematics. The mathematics process is both a creative and explorative process and is the most important face of mathematics. It is the fountainhead from which mathematical knowledge flows and a central component of the infrastructure that makes today's technological and informational world possible. 

 

Every student of mathematics needs to learn the mathematics process. The best way to learn the process is to practice it. However, high school and university students are given little chance to experience the full process of creating and exploring mathematics. Instead, they are taught merely about the byproducts of the process/facts using perfunctory procedures and calculations separated from the process, which made them. 

 

Mathematics is an indispensable part of education. Its practical utility is not understood by many. This has happened because of sheer ignorance of educators and learners of mathematics. This ignorance has led to skepticism or phobia of mathematics. Mathematics is not born skeptical but made skeptical due to heterogeneous factors. The National Education Policy 1986 (NEP 1986) has brought many thoughts in the education system. These thoughts are the milestones to bring development into the system. The policy makers had studied the heterogeneous factors that have over the years made mathematics skeptical thoroughly and recommended a few suggestions towards improvising mathematics education in the country. Further, National Curriculum Framework 2005 (NCF 2005) also called for Mathematization of the child’s mind.

 

Mathematics, according to NEP 1986, should be visualized as the vehicle to train a child to think, reason, analyze, and articulate logically. Apart from being a specific subject, mathematics should be treated as a concomitant to any subject involving analysis and reasoning. With the introduction of computers in schools, educational computing, and emergence of learning through understanding of cause-effect relationships and the interplay of variables, teaching of Mathematics will be suitably redesigned to bring it in line with modern technological devices. According to NEP 1986, the following are basic tenets of mathematics teaching at school level.