Don’t Run Away From Maths - written by Alfred (a short story for kids)

Once upon a time in a place called Nigeria, there lived a nice little Christian boy named Daniel. He had a deep walk with God and his personal relationship with God meant everything to him.Daniel had a big brother named Leo. He was a Christian too but he was merely more than just another church goer. He didn’t take his relationship with God half as seriously as his younger brother did. Then again he didn’t care about that. His life just pretty much revolved around sports, his friends and video games. He was an average student in school unlike Daniel who was a stellar student.

Daniel had just graduated from kindergarten with an unsurprisingly stellar performance.

Leo told Daniel that juinor high school maths is a lot harder than kindergarten Maths so he should no longer expect to have A’s and 100% scores in Maths.

Daniel didn’t know if that was quite true but if it was easy to shake off the feeling that that thought had planted inside him, he would have. He hated the feeling of fear.

Daniel asked questions to people to find out if what Leo told him was true. Unfortunately, he asked the right questions to the wrong people and he ended up getting answers that worsened his fears.   Daniel decided to ask his Mum, she would know best.

Daniel’s Mum tells him not to worry about anything, that he would do just fine.

Leo overheard the conversation and later told Daniel that that’s just the typical thing for a Mum to say.

Daniel started rethinking his goals of becoming an architect in the future and because of his fears he starts to think of any other career that he might like that doesn’t have Maths as one of its core subjects.

Finally, Daniel’s first day of junior high school arrived. When the Maths teacher was about to begin he runs out of the class room in fear screaming No! No! No!

Daniel had never failed a subject before, and unlike other students who don’t take their education seriously; seeing anything short of an A or a stellar score on his test sheet was like an unserious kid losing a little league baseball match and crying about it.

A lady who was in the room when he ran out went after him. She asked him what was wrong. He told her about what his brother had said and that he had never failed a subject before and he doesn’t want to start failing now.

She told him that he shouldn’t mind what his elder brother said. She told him that Maths wasn’t hard it’s actually really easy and it’s one of the easiest subjects to get high scores in, but if you approach Maths from the perspective that it’s hard and really difficult. You would surely find it difficult even though it’s not difficult. 

“Are you sure?”, Daniel asked the lady.

“I’m 100% certain”, the lady answered.

They both walked back towards the class together. She stopped at the door and told him that he should check up on her after school; in the principal’s office.That was when he realized that she was the principal. On the first day of school he had become best buddies with the principal. Whoa! that certainly was a good sign.

After school when he checked up on the principal. The principal asked him how was the Maths class. Daniel smiled a big wide smile and then showed her his first ever set of Junior high school Maths problems that he had solved in his exercise book and at the top right hand corner was the Maths teacher’s handwriting of the score: 100%.

THE END.