We Can Work It Out

A report today finds that mathematics teaching in schools concentrates too much on passing exams and not on creating an understanding of the subject. Wow, big surprise. Pupils are leaving school without the real maths knowledge they need. The powers that be complain that not enough students are studying the physical sciences at University, but yet many students are ill-equipped, mathematically, to tackle these subjects and are subsequently disadvantaged.

Yet GSCE grades are on the increase. Of course they are, if all that is happening is that pupils are being trained to pass them! The blame doesn't lie with the teachers, but with the trend for flogging teachers with league tables. More passes = higher league places, and you don't need a degree in maths to work that out. League tables, in all their guises, suck. Let teachers teach, let lecturers lecture, let readers read, let professors profess, let researchers research - and stop counting our beans. Standards must be maintained, but standards don't equal more pieces of paper.

There is a story about the mathematician David Hilbert, who noticed a student had stopped attending his classes. On enquiry, he found out that the student had given up maths to become a poet. His reply?

"Good! He did not have enough imagination to become a mathematician" [1]

You can tell I'm educated, I studied at the Sorbonne, doctored in Mathematics, I could have been a don...

[1] Hoffman, P. The Man Who Loved Only Numbers. New York: Hyperion, 1998.