Wednesday, 4 January 2023
A Splendid Idea
Rishi Sunak wants all pupils to study maths to age 18
The prime minister is looking at plans to ensure all pupils in England study maths in some form until the age of 18.
In his first speech of 2023, Rishi Sunak will also set out the priorities for his premiership, including tackling backlogs in the health service.
A splendid idea. Perhaps this policy will eventually lead to a situation where far more young people consider a career in government epidemiology, government climate science or calculating the costs and benefits of major government projects such as HS2. Why not change the name to "Government Maths"?
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7 comments:
Gad! Had a policy like that been in place in 1973, I would have got myself a dead-end job in Vauxhall Motors rather than continue with education. And those jobs disappeared a few years later.
Now, though, let the young so-and-sos have it, hot and strong!
In my experience when journalists, and dolts, talk about "maths" they often mean elementary arithmetic. That should have been mastered in primary school.
Though I suspect that it wasn't until secondary school that we did those sums about wall-papering rooms and the preposterous sums about filling and emptying baths. (The latter sums violated everything that the intelligent schoolboy had observed about water outflow from baths.)
"Maths in some form" will, as usual, not include anything to do with real life. I can say, in all honesty, that having failed all maths exams until I passed GCSE maths at the age of 50, I have never had a need for algebra, calculus or any of the other academic number tricks deemed necessary for success. I have been in a range of occupations, have had many interests and hobbies, and found arithmetic and geometry invaluable and easy to use. A new course in civilised behaviour would be helpful: the trouble is, who would get to decide what is civilised?
Sam - and of course, many of the young so-and-sos will let the teachers have it hot and strong too.
dearieme - one approach might be to have the youngsters fill and empty the school swimming pool or go round the school wall-papering classrooms.
Jannie - arithmetic, geometry and some simple algebra are probably enough for almost everyone. Civilised behaviour courses would at least lead to discussions I suppose.
Will the pupils who leave school at 16 have to continue their maths studies for two more years?
I was in the guinea pig year when the Nuffield SMP Maths Project was introduced, before which A-level Maths was split into Pure & Applied.
No-one really understood all the new stuff, especially the teachers!
My brother, two years older than me, showed me his exam papers - incomprehensible stuff to what I'd been told!
Goodness knows what they inflict on children now.
A typical policy of the technocrat class. We need more sciencey type people in white coats for the White Heat of Technology, let the proles study maths! Whereas what we really need more of are care home staff, hands on workers (think warehouses, food factories, farm labour, restaurant and hospitality workers), and tradespeople of all types. In fact stop sending 50% of 18 year olds to 'uni' to study some pointless degree, and give them a trade instead.
Ed - I wonder what they inflict on children too. We have some clues from the grandkids and it doesn't sound very impressive.
Sobers - yes, the university intake needs drastic pruning. I'm sure a fair number of kids would be better off if they left school at 14 to enter an apprenticeship.
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