Vocal Voices

So says Sunak. Why?

Many of us do not have the ability or aptitude to do higher level maths. It should be clear to teachers that by year 10 or 11 some pupils will never get more than a pass at GCSE. Why torture these pupils for an extra two or three years doing something they are naturally not good at? Their time would be better spent doing subjects where they have a chance of progressing.

I was OK at STEM subjects but no amount of extra tuition could have turned me into an artist, an actor, a gymnast, a poet or a rugby player. I would simply have rebelled.

Maths is not the be all and end all. Most of us can get by in even demanding jobs with no more than good levels of arithmetic, fractions, percentages, a bit of algebra, indices, plane geometry and so on. In our daily lives we do not need calculus, applied maths, statistical analysis, number theory or many other (higher) branches.

Educationalists need to break out of the belief that academic subjects are superior and that vocational ones are (always) inferior. If I want a plumber I will not call a doctor of philosophy and if I want a health check I will not call a painter and decorator. There is a place for everyone in our interconnected world.

When my 2 boys where in school it was all for apprenticeships not university
Neither passed GCSE
Eldest just drifted on government scheme then decided to go into house maintenance never looked back and is successful self employed
Youngest went on a scheme with B/Q now has his own store with a different company
Neither of them would be helped with extra school a exams just worked hard in what they enjoyed I'm proud of them

Wel said, Saundra, and there are plenty of other examples out there.

Workingman wrote:Why torture these pupils for an extra two or three years doing something they are naturally not good at?

I can tell you that I had little aptitude (or interest), in maths at this level. Forcing me to do this for another 3 years would have made me disruptive in the extreme and I would simply not have done the work. You cannot make a child, or adult for that matter, learn something they don't want to.

Witness what happened when I said I didn't want to do French and they told me "you have no choice, you WILL learn French for 3 years, after that you can make your choice". They were to rue those words. I spent 3 years NOT learning French. Granted it has taken me 20 years to gain some facility in French with a full time home here for 10 of them. Languages, like Math, are decidedly not my forte.

The people who make these decisions do not make them for the majority.

Suff wrote:You cannot make a child, or adult for that matter, learn something they don't want to....

The people who make these decisions do not make them for the majority.

Yes. For a few years I was an outreach teacher for a local college teaching literacy and numeracy to those with poor(er) GCSE results. I was visiting such places as warehouses, care homes, nurseries, shops and other small businesses. The people I was helping had already been failed by 11 years in the school education system, so keeping them locked in for another two years would have been of no help to them at all.

Joe had a real block with maths. He’s had to keep doing it at college, he’s there on day release from his apprenticeship.
He actually first sat a maths GCSE in Year 10, his school entered all pupils a year early, and he got a D. Sat it again the following year at the time he did the rest of his GCSEs and he got an E.

He’s since taken it a further four times because a C is a requirement for the college course but as long as he’s doing maths as an extra subject and sitting an exam at the end of it with the expectation of getting a C he’s been able to keep enrolling. He finally got that C (or whatever the numerical equivalent is now) this year at the age of 22 but his results over the years have been D E F E E C.
When he applied for his apprenticeship the company only asked for a D and above so his mark from Year 10 was used for that.

He can work out everything he needs to work out for his job but put him in a maths class or an exam room and that block appears in front of him.

I always did quite well at school except for maths. Arithmetic was bad enough but algebra and geometry usually finished me off. Needless to say I did not take maths at O Level. However, I was good at English and English literature. Probably why I ended up a secretary for most of my life.

I failed my 11plus exams for grammar school
But was given interview I was asked what is the first thing you put in a teapot ? I said tea leaves
It was actually hot water to rinse teapot out
I failed ended up in a factory testing transistors
Hated it went on to work in a plastic factory loved it
But I so wanted to be a florist parents couldn't afford it needed my wage (the good old days)??

Since I found out I have Aphantasia I've been a lot more attentive to things I simply can't do. So my mind has been churning on the whole maths thing. Numbers are difficult for me. But Logic is not. Algebra is logical and therefore makes sense. Geometry makes sense, logically, but requires a strong facility with numbers to get it right. I do that stuff in spreadsheets now.

I can code to do work with maths but if you ask me to manually check the results I get it wrong more often that not. You might think this odd that I can write the code to literally do what I am checking by hand and the code works. It is my checking which does not.

A quick look at Dyscalculia and things become clear.

What is Dyscalculia?
Dyscalculia is a specific and persistent difficulty in understanding numbers which can lead to a diverse range of difficulties with mathematics. It will be unexpected in relation to age, level of education and experience and occurs across all ages and abilities.

Mathematics difficulties are best thought of as a continuum, not a distinct category, and they have many causal factors. Dyscalculia falls at one end of the spectrum and will be distinguishable from other maths issues due to the severity of difficulties with number sense (Me I see no relationship), including subitising (with Aphantasis highly unlikely), symbolic and non-symbolic magnitude comparison (I have severe issues with magnitude and no images to see symbolic), and ordering (Also an issue for me). It can occur singly but often co-occurs with other specific learning difficulties, mathematics anxiety and medical conditions.

English language for me, not too much difficulty. I read a LOT I use grammar tools. Literature? Most of the "stuff" they call literature I call "If you can't just say it then don't expect me to extrapolate from what you said". No images in my head. All leading back to Aphantasia.

Just imagine forcing me to go through 3 more years Maths. As WM clearly says, being failed constantly will not get better with a very strong focus on one single subject. Especially when you are failing at it.

And there you have it. We are all different and with a range of different skills that we all use to our specific benefit as best we can. It is good that is the case because if we were all all-rounders we would never have got Einstein, Hawking. Marie Curie, Mozart, Turing, Bob Marley, Rembrandt, Usain Bolt, Leonardo Da Vinci, bakers, joiners, typists, butchers et al.

Ask any cricketer which side would win: a team of all-rounders or a team with specialist batters, bowlers and wicket keepers, and the answer will always be the specialist team.

BTW, I did badly at English Lit because I also cannot do hyperbole, metaphor, tropes or figures of speech too well. Tell me what you mean and have done with it.

If we were all the same then humanity would be one big blancmange with no substance.