With quotes
like "the maths crisis", "maths is as unpopular as ever", "boring and
difficult" and so on, mathematics gets yet another kicking in the
popular press. However, the fact that few will own
up proudly to being hardly able to read, is the
real key to the issue.
Whatever mathematics is, it has barely
changed in over a thousand years. Therefore, if it is difficult, unpopular,
boring now, was it not always the same? Maybe not. Maybe other things have
changed. Maybe there has been a general dumbing down. Maybe great changes have
occurred in other subjects that keep our students happily occupied, and while
they are busy, short attention spans engaged, they do not care what the point
is. School students are notoriously uninterested in the
future, be it their careers, college courses, even - amazingly enough - their
own exam prospects. They are fully taken up with the now. They want
gratification now. A large element of school mathematics
involves the acquisition of difficult skills: how to work with algebra; the
four rules of fractions, etc etc. But what are these skills for?
Before you embark on an answer, consider all the other subjects. What
are the skills in those subjects there for? When will they be used "in real
life"? The only subject where there is a consensus is
English. In real life you have got to be able to
read - surely? People will say "I was never any
good at French at school" and it does not get in the papers. However, the
admission of not being good at maths has an uncomfortable edge to it: there is
a feeling that maths is important, but people cannot articulate why. Maths is
important in school because it is the one discipline where a whole range of
important issues comes together in almost every lesson :
- Can you listen to instructions? ·
- Can you carry out a sequence of steps?
- Can you think quickly?
- Can you be precise in your thinking and working?
- Can you sustain a thinking-and-working session beyond a
few minutes?
- Can you move from the particular case to the general
case?
- Can you think in the abstract?
- Can you stick at it when the going gets rough?
- Can you seek advice?
Your progress will falter if you are weak at any one of
these. So, yes, maths requires effort. Maths is boring and difficult in so far
as the above is a list of boring and difficult attributes. I would argue that
we need a society proficient in these skills.
We need to get across to our students firstly that these
skills are being taught and secondly that they are good for them, and we
need to do this quickly before they all mentally jump ship, get their crayons
out and return to colouring in.
One problem I will admit about school
mathematics. It is about the above skills and, unfortunately, it is not about
much else. It is unrelentingly focused. |
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