Educational Initiatives Blog

What does subtraction mean?

We asked a lot of students from the asked to around 2000 students from Urdu and Telugu medium schools. ‘Subtract 26 from 51’

Watch the video to see what students had to say…

Some responses that we received were:

Some students think the answer is 5. In this case they think that 1 can be subtracted from 6 to give 5, but 5 cannot be subtracted from 2 so they must write 0 there. In this case the answer would be 05.

Another set of students said the answer could be 25. Here students think that 1 can be subtracted from 6 to give 5, but since 5 cannot be subtracted from 2, 2 is written as it is to give 25.

Some others think that the answer is  24. 5 cannot be subtracted from 2, 1 is borrowed from 6. As a result, at the tens place it would be 12 -5 and at the ones place, 5-1. But students by incorrectly calculate it as 24 instead of 74.

In our view, As seen from the various responses above, it seems that at a very early age, students start forming algorithms, to solve certain problems, in their minds. The more important part, a correct understanding, seems to be missing and hence they come up with various wrong answers. We need to be aware of such difficulties students face in understanding these basic concepts.

We encourage you to try some of these out and share your experience with us.