ABSTRACT
This is primarily a book about learning mathematics with understanding, not about teaching it, though there are, of course, many implications for the latter. But most readers are likely to have the same attitude to the subject as they acquired at school, so an examination of these attitudes, and how they may have been acquired, is still relevant. For those with feelings of dislike, bafflement or despair towards mathematics, the aim of this chapter is to suggest that the fault was not theirs-indeed, that these responses may well have been the appropriate ones to the non-mathematics which they encountered. And those who remember their school mathematics with interest and pleasure will realize, if they did not before, how lucky they were. Chapters 2 and 3, in particular, have emphasized the particular dependence of the student of mathematics on good teaching, especially in the earlier stages, when foundation schemas, and also what may be long-lasting attitudes to the subject, are being formed.
