Teaching Maths

[poliphilo]

A new report, commissioned by the Tories, is recommending that children be taught maths until they're 18.  I so disagree.

Firstly, because lots of people are number blind and it's cruel to keep them slaving away. ( I'm one. Thanks to some very good teaching I passed my "O" level at the second attempt, dropped the subject with a sigh of relief and promptly went back to counting on my fingers.) 

Secondly because these days we've got calculators. 

Leave maths to those with an aptitude for it (like Ailz). 

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Doesn't that really depend on what "teaching math" (I'm American, so I get to use the singular) means?

I mean, the term "math" covers a HUGE range of things, many of which are highly useful for anybody. Basic arithmetic is useful, even if you tend to have a calculator. The REALLY useful thing to be taught in math is what I like to think of as "bullshit detection" -- people throw numbers around which, on a moment's thought, are clearly just plain wrong. If someone says that, for instance, sixty thousand people a year are killed in satanic rituals -- and, yes, people DO say that -- you have to have a gut feeling for "is that number bullshit or not?"

And math education can help that.

In the United States, a conservative candidate for President is saying that we should be grateful to the super-wealthy, because they pay 60% of the taxes in the United States.

Proper math, and for that matter, science, education would teach people to wonder what the context was -- okay, they pay 60% of the taxes . . . but they have 80% of the money. So that's actually LESS than what would seem to be fair. . .

If math education means training people to understand numbers well enough to be informed and active citizens, then it is absolutely useful.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't know how maths is taught these days, but in my day it was taught in the abstract- with very little suggestion that it could be a skill for living. The same went for most other subjects.