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THE GREAT MATHS HOAX
This web page is dedicated to the millions of people who hated maths at school, who lack the maths 'gene' and who had maths rammed down their throats for hour upon desperate hour a week, 'because you'll need it later on' or 'because it develops logical thinking'.
This is a page devoted to all those who know these incitements were just plain baloney. They haven't used the sort of maths in the maths exam papers attached since they left school. They're the victims of an intellectual form of child abuse.
Since time immemorial the three R's have been reading, 'riting' and 'rithmetic'. NB, 'rithmetic', not maths.
Everyone should have a basic understanding of arithmetic. At the mst basic level, if you don't know your tables you can't solve most basic of multiplication and division problems. Just 'off your head', you won't be able to work out what 42÷7 is or what 9x7 is.
Maths on the other hand is a trade skill. Most adults wouldn't use maths from one year to the next. They can't remember any of the maths they did at school, cooped up in classrooms when they could have been running free outside.
Same with science, which is just maths masquerading under another name.
To tell school students that maths is an essential career skill is a fraud, a hoax a legerdemain. 10% of school students doing it would be about right - and even if they had a vocation in the sciences that used maths, they would rarely use the stuff they learnt in school - or these days they'd get a machine to do it for them. It's importance in school curricula is out of all proportion to it's value to the every day life of 95% of people.
Take out rods, poles and perches; take out pounds, shillings, pence and guineas; take out ounces, pounds, stones and tons, take out inches, feet, yards, miles, rods, poles and perches and their various squares and cubes, take out pounds per square inch, take out British thermal units and foot poundals, take out horsepower. Throw away the log books, trig tables and slide rules; throw out simultaneous equations and geometry, throw out the point (.01 of an inch) system for measuring rainfall - and you could squeeze all the arithmetic you need to get by in life into a few months, not years.
Once you've switched to a metric system, made sure every student knew their tables and were competent at mental arithmetic; given every student a calculator and taught them how to use a spreadsheet, there shouldn't be much more to do - until they get to university. Maybe Pythagoras's Theorem might come in handy if you're putting in a shed or marking out a tennis court!
There are more important things to learn in schools.
If you need to have specific maths skills you can pick them up on the job, at TAFE or university. Why we need to teach school students the maths used by surveyors statisticians and actuaries beggars belief.
Give people who handle money a computerized cash register and you could teach them everything they need to know by the end of grade 4.
The number of people who use maths in their careers doesn't justify the time spent in schools doing this stuff. Here's the evidence:
No-one ever became more intelligent doing, maths. As for logical thinking, all that happens is that the more intelligent maths students become better at doing maths. The transfer to other life situations is over-rated. In fact the number of mathematicians who have been blinded by faith in royal and ancient superstitions is legion.
If you have the maths gene and you want to be a rocket scientist, surveyor, engineer, actuary or statistician you can pick up all the maths that you might have learnt at school (and which might be essential for your job) in a couple of months at university. You don't need to learn any of this crap in high school. A mature brain coupled with an incentive to learn will pick it up in a tenth of the time.
If you want to be an electrician, carpenter, plumber or builder you can pick up your maths skills in TAFE.
Let's not inflict this stuff on children who'll never use it, particularly those who don't have the aptitude for it.
Let's not have schools doing universities' dirty work for them.
Maths in schools is a form of quasi religious indoctrination, religious in the context that its existence in the school curriculum is justified on the basis of faith in the belief that secondary school students need to understand maths to successfully navigate the wilds of modern life. They don't.
Maths education in schools is based purely on the say so of a hand full of university academics and maths teachers that it's an important life skill. It's not. It bares little relevance to what most people do in their daily lives. There is no room for 'faith based' subjects in schools.
The time spent on maths squeezes out some of the important life-skills that children need to learn - how to get the job they'd do for nothing, but which they did so well they were paid handsomely, how to navigate relationships, parenthood, getting the sack and going broke - not necessarily in that order.
What you won't learn in maths classes is something useful like accountancy, book keeping, how to use a spreadsheet or data base, how to read a balance sheet, how to successfully manage a share portfolio or make money on the stock market, how to become a financial success at the race track or the casino and why you need to avoid poker machines and lottery tickets.
Looking back on it I'd say teaching card games would be a very useful addition to any numeracy program along with mental and sodoku. Any course that prides itself on stimulating mental thought processing and logical thinking would be deficient if it didn't include chess, cards, Cludo, Rubics Cube, crosswords, or Chinese Checkers.
Teaching children how to navigate the wilds of the stock exchange and the race track or how to avoid the legalized fraud of poker machines and online gambling would certainly not be a waste of time.
Every school student needs to ask themselves a few of questions; 'Do I need to learn this stuff?' Will I ever use this stuff?' How could I be better occupying myself right now if I wasn't sitting here being force-fed this crap?' I'll learn it when I need it and when I need it I will learn it quickly.
It's the same with science courses. Anyone who needs to know the laws of Hooke, Newton and Boyle should pick them up in post secondary school education. 'Science' is code word for more maths.
Kids get fired up at the Canberra pleasure dome, Questacon and then go back to a life of drudgery in school doing equations. What sort of a hoax is that?
On the other hand I find courses in the history of science fascinating. How come no-one every told me about Nikola Tesla until recently - or Hedy Lamarr? Most school students think Brunell is a country in South East Asia. By all means fill my mind up with the history of maths, science and engineering, but don't expect me to do equations. By all means let me drive my car without having to make it, or understand what happens between when I push down on the brake and when I come to a stop.
If you've got the maths gene/aptitude/knack, at the end of year twelve you can appear as a genius with top marks for maths 1, maths 2, physics, chemistry and economics. Gonski and Gillard want these people to become teachers fer chrissakes. What dullness do we intend to inflict on the next generation of school students?
If you've got the music, sport and clown skills gene/aptitude/knack you're treated like a dunce. Chances are though that you'll make a good teacher.
It's currently the flavour of our time to shitbag university entrants to education courses who have low tertiary entrance scores. If there was a matriculation course called 'teaching' and it was broken down into three or four subjects, the students who would make the best teachers would enter universities looking like geniuses. The schools would end up with vibrant and dynamic teachers, instead of Gradgrinds.
Finally, if you don't have an IQ over 120, don't even think of doing maths after year 10. You'll drive yourself nuts.
STEM Don't get me started about STEM. It's not science, technology, engineering and maths, it's just plain maths, maths, maths and more maths. It should be MMMM.
Click here to see if you can do my 1961 year 11 maths papers. Unless you're a maths teacher I'll lay you London to a brick you'll have trouble reading the problems let alone working out how to solve them. And I'll betcha that in all your adult life you've never used any of the stuff served up in these exam papers.
A CONFESSION I failed both these exam papers with flying colours.
John Miller
John Miller Stirling ACT Australia 2611. 61 2 6288 7703
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