When mathematics leaves no child behind

For many students, the most frightening words a teacher can utter are not “final examination” but something much simpler: “Who wants to solve this problem?”

The silence that follows tells us something important about mathematics education.

After teaching mathematics for about a decade—first in the Philippines and later in the United States—I have become convinced that many children who say they are “bad at math” are not describing their ability. They are describing their experience of mathematics.

They have forgotten a prerequisite concept. They cannot remember the sequence of steps. They have answered incorrectly too many times in public. Eventually, difficulty becomes embarrassment, embarrassment becomes avoidance, and avoidance becomes the belief that mathematics belongs to other people.

This problem becomes even more consequential for learners with disabilities.

I began teaching at a Montessori school in Parañaque, where I worked with Grades 7 to 10 students in a mathematics resource classroom. Years later, in the United States, I taught both general and special education mathematics and became responsible for students with individualized education programs. Many had specific learning disabilities, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or autism.

Different countries, different systems—but a remarkably similar question confronted me: How do we maintain high expectations without teaching as though every child learns in the same way and at the same speed?

This question matters to Philippine education.

Teachers are understandably pressured to cover competencies. But covering a lesson is not the same as a child learning it. A student who has not mastered integers will carry that weakness into algebra. A student who memorizes a procedure without understanding why it works may pass Friday’s quiz and struggle again on Monday.

In my Philippine classroom, I saw students who needed repeated practice to retain mathematical procedures. Some struggled even with multiplication facts. I learned to break tasks into smaller steps, use visual materials, provide repeated guided practice, and differentiate instruction.

This experience, strengthened by my work in American classrooms, eventually led me to organize my teaching practice into what I call the SCOPE Framework: Structured Collaborative Opportunities for Problem-Solving and Empowerment.

Its first principle is simple: scaffold learning. Complex tasks become less intimidating when broken into manageable steps, with teachers gradually transferring responsibility to the learner.

But scaffolding alone is insufficient. Students must also communicate mathematics. When learners explain how they reached an answer, question a classmate’s reasoning, or identify where a solution went wrong, mathematics stops being merely an exercise in producing correct answers. It becomes a way of thinking.

Neither should we underestimate confidence. Students who repeatedly experience failure eventually protect themselves by refusing to try. A good mathematics classroom therefore treats mistakes not as verdicts on intelligence but as information. Instead of simply declaring an answer wrong, I invite students to examine the reasoning, agree or disagree, and explain why.

What, then, might these experiences offer Philippine education? We should resist the temptation to import another country’s educational system wholesale. The Philippines possesses strengths worth defending. One is bayanihan—our instinct for cooperation and shared responsibility.

Perhaps the task is to translate that cultural strength into classroom practice.

Imagine mathematics classrooms where bayanihan means students reasoning together rather than merely sitting together; where teachers are given the training and resources to differentiate instruction; where mastery matters more than racing through the curriculum; and where children learn that asking for help is not weakness and making a mistake is not failure.

For the Department of Education, inclusion cannot simply be a policy aspiration. It must eventually become visible in what happens between teacher and learner: in the time given to master a concept, the opportunities to speak and collaborate, the accommodations available to those who need them, and the connection between mathematics and everyday life.

For teachers, the challenge may be even more immediate. Before asking, “Did I finish the lesson?” perhaps we should ask, “Who was able to participate in the learning—and who was left behind?”

That small change in question could produce a profound change in education.

Because the true measure of an inclusive mathematics classroom is not how quickly the teacher reaches the end of the curriculum.

It is how many children discover that they, too, are capable of reaching the answer.

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Mark Russel Crisostomo is a Filipino mathematics and special education educator who has taught in the Philippines and the United States. He developed the SCOPE Framework for inclusive mathematics instruction.