In my head, piece of cake! As it should be given the level to which I studied and taught maths. Could have been embarrassing though!
I love maths with a passion, always have done. I personally think teaching maths right the way through schooling is a good idea. You use it more than you probably realise. Except for some of Mr M's bus passengers by the sound of it.
I think the maths teacher you have can make a huge difference.
There are more important things for the government to sort out at the moment than making pupils learn maths until they’re 18, even though I was a teacher.
Post by Berry McPaper-cuts on Jan 7, 2023 15:19:50 GMT
EarlyBird said I think the maths teacher you have can make a huge difference.
From today’s DT ‘ For numerous Britons, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s announcement last week that all pupils will study maths until the age of 18 appeared to be something of a zero-sum deal. For all those children who would benefit from – and cope with – additional tuition, many more would find extra maths a debilitating struggle.
For Nick MacKinnon, former Winchester College maths teacher and housemaster, who can count the PM as a former pupil, there’s no doubt that this is not a smart idea.
“This is the first stupid thing Sunak has said since becoming PM,” says MacKinnon, who worked at the exclusive Hampshire school for 34 years from 1986 to 2020.
MacKinnon – who otherwise approves of Sunak, though he doesn’t remember him from school – explains: “The idea is bizarrely self-revealing.”
The issue, he believes, is that Sunak, who he thinks was about a quarter of the way down the maths ability range at Winchester, had such an incredible maths education that the PM simply doesn’t understand both how good it was, or how unusual. “Rishi Sunak had a Concorde maths education, built in Britain. It was as good as anyone’s in the history of the world.”
He says Sunak also doesn’t comprehend how difficult the task of replicating it will be.
“At the time Rishi’s parents sent him to Winchester,” he says, “we were in the last years of using the School Mathematics Project (SMP), which was inspired by the Cold War. He was in the very last cohort. Sunak got his maths straight from the SMP factory in Winchester.”
Those of us old and lucky enough to have learnt our maths via SMP (in large Cambridge University Press textbooks) can be identified by the way we recognise, Pavlovian-style, the three words associated with it: sets, mappings and vectors.
This trio of concepts lay at the heart of SMP maths or the New Maths, a course designed by teachers and organised by Sir Bryan Thwaites out of the University of Southampton.
At the time, the Russians had launched their Sputnik programme and the race to explore space had begun. Thwaites was determined to bring the British mathematical world up to speed, so that we wouldn’t fall behind the Soviets and the Americans.
That meant walking away from the traditional arithmetical approach and introducing children to abstract mathematics from the age of four.
A few independent schools such as Marlborough College began picking the method up – often depending on how close they were to Southampton. The link to Rishi’s alma mater was especially tight: Bryan Thwaites was a Wykehamist and and the staff – particularly heads of maths John Durran and John Smith – were steeped in SMP from the start.
“Winchester really understood it,” says MacKinnon. “At A-Level, lessons were stretching even for Wykehamists, who are traditionally good mathematicians. Rishi was fed that level of maths every day as a norm, like eating his breakfast cereal.”
But not everyone liked New Maths, reports MacKinnon. In the US, the system was abandoned quickly for being too abstract and unfamiliar. In 1999, Time magazine listed the 100 worst things in the 20th century and included New Math alongside prohibition, asbestos and the Treaty of Versailles.
In the UK, most state schools rejected it after an initial enthusiasm, and when Tony Blair began moves to widen access to further education, the SMP became unsustainable as even the most selective schools chose simpler modular courses.
So shouldn’t we be pleased that Rishi Sunak wants us to be better at maths – and will he bring back the elite approach?
To the first question, MacKinnon says that even at Winchester – “a maths school” – some students mustn’t do maths beyond 16. “They are very clever but need to spend time working on the humanities like history, English and French, which anyway are much harder than maths, which is a lazy subject if you can do it. As easy as breathing.”
Sunak cannot see that – then again, “he cannot see that he was given this incredible start in maths,” says MacKinnon. “He’s found his understanding of maths very powerful and wants it for everyone else. He may even think any school could offer what he was given.
“I’m in favour of maths at school, of course; the top 10 per cent should be doing far more interesting work, but most pupils should do far less. People create the maths they need in their work and play as adults, and you find a very high standard in the trades and at the snooker table, but they didn’t learn it at school.”
So does that mean SMP is out? “It won’t be easy to recover that Soviet level of abstraction again, even though we kept it flying at Winchester until Rishi was 18,” says MacKinnon.
High Gaitskell, Richard Crossman and Douglas Jay - to name but three - all high ranking Labour politicians all went to Winchester. It's not only the nasty Tories who think investing money in a good education is profligate.
Don't ask me what I think of you, I might not give the answer that you want me to.
It's not only the nasty Tories who think investing money in a good education is profligate.
Sorry but irrespective of political leanings, good education should have been given in maths (and all subjects) from the age of 5-16. As I said before, if the kids haven't grasped at least a reasonable concept of it in 11 years, another 2 won't make much difference, especially using a completely new method of teaching it.
Moodyson teacher was hopeless at maths as I mentioned, but Moodyson tyre fitter was hopeless at virtually everything academic. Tyre fitting involves a fair bit of numeracy I should think, so he learnt his trade at work as an apprentice and has done fine.
It's not only the nasty Tories who think investing money in a good education is profligate.
Sorry but irrespective of political leanings, good education should have been given in maths (and all subjects) from the age of 5-16. As I said before, if the kids haven't grasped at least a reasonable concept of it in 11 years, another 2 won't make much difference, especially using a completely new method of teaching it.
Absolutely.
If a significant percentage of kids haven't grasped the basics of maths by age 16, then there's something seriously wrong with the education system. If it's a problem with teaching methods, then doing the same wrong things for an additional two years won't solve the problem. If it's lack of staff or funding, then extending it to 18 will simply stretch those resources even more thinly, thus harming maths education at all levels.
As for the quiz, I got 10 out of 10 - although, as a maths graduate, anything less would have been embarrassing!
Post by Berry McPaper-cuts on Jan 8, 2023 15:52:02 GMT
I can only say again that the support needs to go into EYFS. Listen to the Jesuits , not something I would usually write. “ Equally well known is the Jesuits' reputation as educators – giving rise to the adage: "Give me a child of seven, and I will show you the man."”