Even before his Famous Five goals – the economy, inflation, national debt, NHS waiting lists and small boats – Rishi Sunak announced another goal In his first major speech since being made prime minister. “In a world where data is everywhere and statistics underpin every job, letting our children out into that world without those skills is letting our children down.” So he’s planning to have every pupil in England study maths in some form until they’re eighteen.
Sounds plausible. All those poll numbers, mortgage rates, inflation and the cost of buying and using a phone – of course the people in England need to be able to do the sums. Except that Sunak’s statement shows that he hasn’t even the faintest grasp of the nature of education.
Why do we have schools? So our children will learn stuff – the three Rs, reading, writing and arithmetic. True, but education goes beyond that. The school’s job is not simply to produce people with skills in certain areas . It’s there to draw out the child’s various talents and interests and general humanity. In short, education is about making people the most fully human they can be, not about producing cogs to fit into the work machine.
Almost as important, Sunak shows he knows next to nothing about teaching and learning. Think about your school days and the subjects you liked/hated. Now think of the teacher who taught you the subject you liked/hated. Virtually without exception, we liked the subject where we liked the teacher, and hated the subject where we hated the teacher.
So, dear Rishi, with your tight-fitting suit and bright-eyed air of energy, it’s not how long you’ve been taught a subject that matters. It’s who taught you and how. If the teacher was a brute or lazy or boring, having to be taught by him/her for longer will only exacerbate the problem. What’s needed are men and women at the front of the classroom who clearly love their subject and want to ignite the same love in the young people they face.
A final point. We are more likely to do things when we see the point in doing them. A huge amount of mathematics is pointless for most pupils. We don’t use the square of the hypotenuse in outside-school life, and algebra is about as important day-to-day as Ancient Greek.
How would you make maths somehow useful in everyday life? Well, I remember a young lad – about twelve, I’d reckon – who used to sell the Belfast Telegraph at the lights where traffic entered the West Link in Belfast. He would go from car to car during their brief stop, pass the paper into the car, take the payment, at lightning speed calculate what change if any was required, pass it to the driver and move on.
Two things: I’d wager that kid left school an academic failure. And he was teaching himself mathematical skills in the real world.
Go figger, Rishi.
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