A Mathematician's lament is every Mathematician's lament who is struggling to share the artistic taste of Maths to young students due to the time bounded rigid curriculum. Dr Paul Lockhart criticizes the US Mathematics education system for it's doing no good to anyone. He stresses that Maths is an art to be learnt through one's own creativity and imagination. As a Mathematician myself agree to this. It does have both scientific and artistic aspect but due to the no opportunity to appreciate the aestheticism of Maths, young people usually find Maths as a dry subject. The forcing of Maths as a mandatory and important subject adds extra dryness and disinterest. Children are fed the formulas, concepts and theories and expected to vomit them on a paper whenever asked to. They are not given a room to think why and how. Children should be provided with an environment and experiences that increase their curiosity and creatively solve Mathematical problems from their own imagination. No, it's not possible in a curriculum we are following, even if we want to. Some teachers gave up on their passion of teaching through their own method. This article questioned my role as a teacher. What should I do? Should I just continue teaching like everyone else does, spoon feeding the children or infuse the curiosity in students and encourage them to approach maths as an art subject and stimulate their imagination? I know the beauty of Maths, I have felt it. I want to share it with my students. But will the curriculum allow me to? Let me quote the words of Carl Friedrich Gauss, the prince of Mathematics as a concluding statement:
"It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment."
