I used to think that too. So, I’ve decided to start writing. And I’m starting with a story.
Last week, I was teaching Abraham, a Year 8 student in the UK, about sequences.
At some point, I mentioned Fibonacci.
He looked at me blankly.
“Miss, what is Fibonacci?”
I explained it the way most teachers would. The sequence starts with 1, 1 and every number after that is the sum of the two before it. So 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21… and so on forever.
He nodded politely.
He had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.
So I stopped.
I pulled up a YouTube video, an animated, visual explanation. We watched it together. I asked him again.
“Do you get it now?”
“…Kinda.”
Still not there. So I went to Google Images. I showed him a sunflower. A snail shell. A pine cone. His own palm.
“What do you notice? What is the same in all of these?”
He leaned forward. Looked carefully.
“It keeps spiralling. As it grows from a small point outward and just… keeps going.”
I added, “Yes. That’s Fibonacci. That’s the sequence. Nature has been doing this mathematics long before any textbook was written.”
His face changed. That was the moment. You know the one, when a concept stops being abstract and becomes real.
Then I tested the same thing on his older sister. Year 8. Same question. Same blank look. Same journey to understanding.
And I sat with that for a while afterwards.
Why were we never taught mathematics this way?
Why did it take a YouTube video and a Google image search to unlock what a textbook definition couldn’t?
I’ve been asking myself this question for years. It’s actually a big part of why I built School of Mathematics Nigeria, and why we created our Mathematics Colouring Book.
Because here is what I know now:
Mathematics is not abstract. We made it abstract.
Fibonacci isn’t a sequence that lives in a textbook. It’s in the flower you walked past this morning. It’s in the spiral of a galaxy. It’s in the proportions of the human face. It has been hiding in plain sight your entire life.
When students struggle with mathematics, we assume the problem is the student.
But what if the problem is the design?
What if we built mathematics education around memorising answers instead of recognising patterns? Around passing tests instead of seeing the world differently?
That’s the question I’m going to spend the next few years properly, academically, and rigorously chasing.
And I’m going to document all of it here.
Real stories from the classroom. Ideas I’m wrestling with. Things I’m reading. Connections I’m making between what I’m studying and what I’m seeing in real students like Abraham.
If you want to start seeing mathematics the way Abraham did that afternoon – in flowers, in shells, in the spiral of your own palm, our Mathematics Colouring Book was made exactly for that.
It’s not just for children. It’s for anyone who was taught to fear mathematics rather than find it beautiful.
Mathematics is everywhere around us. We just need better ways of showing people where to look.
Follow along. Every Week.
And tell me, what’s one thing you wish someone had shown you about mathematics when you were in school? I’m genuinely asking.
YouTube video teaching more about the Fibonacci Sequence: https://youtu.be/CxxfyYepxvY