Ne’er a day goes by when math teachers don’t hear one of these top three myths. There are others, for sure. But these are the top three. Myths are reasons that have been ridden so hard that they have become excuses. The excuses are ridden so hard that someone eventually earns a research grant to study the “phenomenon.” Results of these studies are more confirmation bias than to real science.

Myth #1: Students with good math grades are just smart.

Undoubtedly, intelligent students have the capacity to perform better academically much the way a 7-footer has the capacity to be better at basketball. However, these are not mutually exclusive, are they? We all know smart kids with low grades, just like there are tall people with the grace of a bull moose.

First of all, school grades are not a measure of intelligence. Moreover, being intelligent does not entitle a student to good grades.

This is often just an excuse to be lazy.

Myth #2: The teacher likes good students better than me.

That may be, but teachers are professionals. They do not “flunk” students for likability reasons. That’d be like a doctor giving a bad medical report because she didn’t like her patient? Teachers suppress their emotions when grading to maintain objectivity, especially in math.

Course objectives do not have a likability component. And neither do a state’s math standards.

This, too, is an excuse for a student to be less than their best.

Myth #3: I have test anxiety.

No such condition exists. It isn’t in any peer-reviewed medical journals. Is it normal to be nervous about a big test? You bet! But does being nervous cause a student to forget all that he or she has mastered? It most certainly does not.

What if you took a test on your favorite video game, your address, school grade, etc.? You pass with flying colors. That’s because these things are mastered. Although, they often forget to put their name on a test. They certainly have not “frozen” and forgotten it.

The most likely reason to perform poorly on an assessment is that the content isn’t understood forward and back, upside down, and inside out. That is, the content isn’t familiar. A student imagining he has some never-documented cognitive ailment is also tantamount to excuse-making.

When students do their assignments, their test scores will take care of themselves.

Conclusion

These myths are predicated on one critically flawed mindset. And that mindset is that people who do better than us are in some way able to “game the system” with some secrets to which they are not privy. Doing poorly because you think you’re being denied some advantage that others are lucky enough to have… well, it doesn’t make sense. Furthermore, it’s a hallmark of cognitive dissonance.

A few ideas to help people of this belief to reframe:

• The small guy in the gym doesn’t train as hard as the big guy. The big guy is not on some secret supplement the little guy doesn’t know about.
• Broke people don’t budget as well as flush people. Flush people know where every dollar is going at the beginning of every month.
• And the low-performing student doesn’t cognitively engage and practice as much as the high-performing student. The high performing student is closer to 10,000 hours.