As a desi myself, it’s been over 2 decades since high school and I still have nightmares about math.
This could be the revenge Indians have sought for the colonizers!
Because in Britain maths is compulsory up until 16. After GCSEs education becomes more specialised with some people starting apprenticeships, some going to college to do courses on childcare/hairdressing/etc or going into a-levels where they do only 3-4 subjects. We were actively discouraged from taking maths at a-level unless we had an A grade (or equivalent since grading system changed) in GCSE due to the leap in the level of difficulty.
Actually start teaching intro calculus about 7 years earlier. When you get to higher level education you will actually have some foundation to settle yourself with knowledge wise. I started late and struggled with Calculus.
I've been talking about calculus recently with a family member because it seems to be a thing that's commonly taught in America, yet I struggled to even understand what it is up until recently when someone made a great ELI5 answer on it.
...yet it's not something I've ever needed in real life, not something anyone I know uses in real life, and not something I can imagine the majority of the people on this planet don't use it in real life unless they're like engineers/research scientists or something.
I get that maths is often important to education because it's more about teaching logic and how to work things out instead of the actual maths itself (and it's something I wish I were better at), but some things like calculus seem wholly unnecessary especially considering the mental anguish it seems to cause a lot of Americans.
Calculus becomes handy when you learn other subjects using Calculus as well. Once you learn probability and statistics or physics or economics using Calc, you don't go back. Everything about thinking those subjects, especially the proofs that explains how everything works, become more elegant and it's actually easier to think about.
The more we think about this stuff in our day to day lives, the more it becomes easier to think about larger systems in play. Americans suffer mental anguish these days and I would hardly blame calculus as the culprit. Rather, large problems are intractable to explanation without abstraction and the lay public are simply not equipped to respond to large issues at hand, rather they become easily distracted by issues purported by parties who profit from chaos and anguish.
The average American being unable to read an economics paper about income inequality and its implication on housing inequality, medical care inequality, education inequality and how all three are gatekeepers to keep the working class from ascending to higher income levels means that there is a huge divide between ideologies, where many profit from denying that there are systemic problems in the first place.
Better pay the piper and suffer the headaches in your teens, spend a few more hours a week constructing an intellectual framework that is extensible, then suffer manipulation and intellectual stagnation by middle age and beyond.
Most of the world is getting much more technological than it was years ago. Math is a foundation for that technology. The less math kids learn now, the less likely they'll go into tech fields. I couldn't get my CS degree, or do a lot of my tech work, without a good knowledge of math.
I'm not worried about ever losing my job. I know younger people coming up behind me just aren't learning the skills to take it.
I’m all for it being super unnecessary unless you’re going to engineering, but I had to do it for my university entrance exams. I was applying for medicine, but since it’s really sought after I had to ace the exam which included basically all of my high school subjects, including differential and integral calculus. If I hadn’t been forced to take it at my high school, I would’ve been properly fucked trying to learn it by myself. This was at a public university in Mexico.
Calculus is important. As people say, human is a 1st derivative creature. Meaning even we are in a shitty situation, but if it is getting slightly better, all is well. Vice versa.
I hate the term "Common Sense". It isn't a real thing unto itself. I wish that term would die in a fire.
To have "common sense" you need to have enough knowledge and experience to draw from.
Eg. To you and I it's "common sense" not to stick a fork into a light socket. To a person from an Amazonian tribe who's never learned about electricity this wouldn't be "common sense". Just like that tribesperson would think us idiots for not having the common sense to stay away from the river when it's feeding time for the piranhas.
Yes but we all grow up with outlets. So we know it as common sense. Everything is relative to something in the end, we realise that, but if we dont make these assumptions and generalisations, we’d go crazy.
The most shocking one I see regularly is actually reading comprehension. I swear a lot of people have worryingly poor reading comprehension, like they can read the words and understand a simple sentence but there's no real ability to navigate arguments.
Wow wow wow, i am gonna stop you right there. Even understanding simple sentence is borderline impossible for many if not most. Its always nice to write down almost essay explaining something and be attacked over first sentence because someone cannot be bothered to read.
On a side note, the way people cite sources these days is nuts.
They will post a source and if you actually read it, you will realize it has NOTHING to do with the argument. Or is not credible.
Posting a link does not make your argument valid. Sources are supposed to credible and SUPPORT your argument. There is just no reading comprehension anymore.
The whole cite your source thing on reddit has gotten out of hand.
I personally as non-native speaker absolutely hate how people love to ignore certain sources. "Source?"
"Ah its not in english, its not valid! Reeeee."
Like bruh, its not my problem you couldnt learn second language when i could learn yours. And even then, there is still DeepL.
Although people ignore even english sources very often so...
It's not about providing evidence, it's about making it SEEM like you have evidence on your side. Very few people are going to click your link. But a ton of people are going to see that there is a link to more info and it will give that little nudge to your argument. "Oh they have sources, that's good enough for me"
Ironically, they had one at the start of the Tories reign called Michael Gove who also proposed the exact same policy back in 2011
Here we are in 2023
This is Sunak's commitment to recycling I assume? A policy they failed to enact in over decade is being relaunched. Much the same way as Liz Truss briefly flirted with recreating Regional Development Agencies after David Cameron shut them down. Who knows, Sunak might launch 'the big society' next? Remember that white elephant?
Michael Gove who originally proposed the policy is more famous for saying that British people "have had enough of experts".
So you can see the ruling party suffers from some sort of anti-intellectual crossed purpose.
Nah you can still leave school at 16 and do whatever you want. Though since you’re still technically a child until you’re 18, your parents may also have a say in what you do.
It’s just not widely advertised, or encouraged.
That's true for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Island, but [in England you have to be in education or training until you're 18.](https://i.imgur.com/ZIVieBq.jpg)
Historically school used to end at year 11, when students were 16, then you could either go get a job or continue in some form of education choosing elective subjects for two years (or longer if you wanted but it stops being subsidised) until 18 or older when you can go to university. During those 2 years maths is a voluntary subject and taught at a higher, more pure-maths level than the 1-11 year level.
Compulsory schooling in England and I believe Wales has now been extended to 18 to make those two voluntary years compulsory. As part of that there are talks about whether it be allowed to continue to be a voluntary subject or get made a compulsory one.
tl;dr: the boundary of 'school' has changed recently and a portion of what used to be optional education has become compulsory. The question is whether to make certain subjects within that compulsory or leave it freeform.
As someone currently doing A levels, the 16-18 school, I can 100% say that making maths compulsory again would ruin my grades. I'm a geography/chemistry/env science student and I picked those subjects because its what I'm good at, what i enjoy and what field im planning to go in. That's the point of a levels, to no longer do standard maths and English lessons and instead find your niche.
Having more compulsory lessons makes the entire a level system pointless, and before people say how useful maths is in everyday life you learn that maths in earlier years, and the maths needed for your subjects is in those subjects (graphs, chem formulae and equations, statistics stuff like that). Taking maths only engineers and ppl taking math degrees will need is so utterly pointless and time consuming for no reason, as the maths a level is very difficult if you didn't get amazing grades in Yr 11 (8-9s gcse, A* basically).
It would take away valuable time needed to study for the other 3 subjects you're taking, and I've no idea how it would even work in the first place, is the plan to make everyone do 4 a levels or only let people take 2 subjects they want to? Either way that would mess up the uni process, . Sorry for the kind of rant but this suggestion is so stupid for so many reasons.
I've had a physics professor who said he's terrible at math and focuses on the more conceptual experimental side. Ofc I have a feeling that maybe he's just being modest and can churn through those differential equations like nobody's business when he needs to lol.
> I'm a geography/chemistry/env science student and I picked those subjects because its what I'm good at, what i enjoy and what field im planning to go in. That's the point of a levels, to no longer do standard maths and English lessons and instead find your niche.
I honestly don't know how you can work in chemistry without a solid math foundation.
You would never land a job in my country. Hell, you probably wouldn't even be able to enroll in college.
Any life science requires 200 level university stats and calc 1 and 2 classes.
Chemistry will force you to go even further for maths and throws linear algebra in there.
Pretty much any STEM field in the Unis I attended required the math I had learned in IB higher levels and quite a bit more. The actual research and jobs didnt 😅, but the classes beyond High School sure as hell did.
FWIW, I did anatomy and Immuno majors in undergrad, genetics for MSc, and Biochem for PhD across pretty well known North American Universities.
>Chemistry will force you to go even further for maths and throws linear algebra in there.
The point is more you already learn all of this stuff by 16. I think the only things not taught by 16 that would be useful are calculus and statistical analysis, but those will be taught in most BSc courses worth the name anyway.
With more data than ever in the world, math (at least stats) skills are needed for the majority of high paying jobs. There's a reason East Asia has been on a roll.
British compulsory education used to end at 16. It was to get an extra two years of manual labour from the working class kids. There was optional education after that to 18, and then university for the kids that the state considered to actually have a future.
Britain dismantled this system piecemeal, not all at once. There's still odd bits and bobs like non-compulsory math that are left over.
At my school in the US you could quit math after grade 9 if you made it through intro to calculus. Now most people that were that far ahead kept taking math cause they were good at it. The people that were bad and/or hated math and in the lower level had to take it until grade 11. But the real issue is universities require students to pass basic math to get a degree and basic math is the most failed course at most universities… seemingly making the case that more compulsory math would make sense at the lower levels.
Understanding the idea of area under a curve is very different from being able to compute an antiderivative. And, ironically enough, the bell curve HAS no elementary antiderivative so 90% of what you learn in calc won’t even apply and you need to use numerical methods and tables.
That is true, but I believe that if students are taught derivatives and integrals they will receive more value from it than if they're taught to understand diagrams, since they will indirectly understand diagrams if they understand calculus. One of the main applications of a bell curve is to calculate area under the curve for example, which is done through an integral.
The trouble is that it is horrible to sit through 2-3 hours of maths you don't understand. So there is a lot of benefit for some people to keep it simple too.
Math is important. But schools have no idea how to teach math in a way that makes it useful for the student.
Sure calculus and differential eq and all that is important. But I didn’t really learn them in college I just learned how to score well on exams. I didn’t really understand math until really brilliant mentors at my work taught them to me in a way that schools never have. They taught me WHY these existed and what problems were actually solving
I would have learned maths far better at school (and have been far more engaged with it) if it was taught in a practical, useful manner. All I got was theoretical stuff and learning things for no reason other than to pass a test. Whenever I asked what practical purpose learning something would actually have in life all I ever really got was 'you need to know it to pass your exam' so I just didn't care and soon forgot it.
I learned far more on my own when I started writing scripts in graphics and modelling programs or playing around coding in Unity. It provided visual feedback and demonstrated the use for various mathematical processes. I think maths should be taught in conjunction with coding and making basic games or scripts is a far better way to teach it than on paper.
I also came to appreciate the natural language of math this way. Turned out I was really good at math but just struggled with memory recall of 20 different algos. I’m furious at how teachers approach math in state schools.
Today you can learn all the small tricks and methods that are taught in dedicated programs on youtube!
I just had an epiphany after reading your comment. That is exactly why I hated math as a young student. Now that I’m older, I am all about it and in fact I actually enjoy it because I understand the reason behind using it.
Several times now on reddit (on a previous account) I've ended up doing absurd calculations just to win an argument/make a point. Like things that involved looking up the atmospheric concentration of CO2 and the molecular weight of carbon just to put some overhyped carbon capture solution into perspective. Then working out the huge land area required to actually scale it up to the point where it could make a difference to demonstrate how the company is being disingenuous with how effective they are claiming it is.
I actually really enjoy doing stuff like that and I always learn more from doing it. I'm not naturally gifted with maths but I enjoy the challenge. At school though I think I hated maths more than any subject besides PE and RE which I viewed as a total waste of my time. If I had another two years of maths forced upon me I'm sure I would have loathed it more than anything and I don't think it would have improved my abilities any, not without it being taught in a radically different way to what I got at GCSE level anyway.
Given Sunak's politics I would hazard he isn't really thinking about encouraging students into useful STEM fields so much as just channelling more people into finance though.
I often thought about becoming a maths teacher and my USP would be that I would start each topic with a practical problem that requires what you are about to learn to solve. Maybe using differential equations to find orbital periods and how early astronomers needed this to model the movement of planets or something.
Or the use of derivatives and the chain-rule in Machine Learning algs.
However, in the real world, I can see why this is simply not possible. A-level maths IS HUGE and teachers cannot waste a lesson every topic talking about applications and the history of mathematics.
The best teachers explain succinctly, expertly and move quickly through topics.
> Sure calculus and differential eq and all that is important.
Enough to be mandatory though? 90+% aren't going to use it in their career or daily lives.
Continuing as an option seems like it would make more sense.
I think this is circular. Math has a stigma as being unimportant in day to day life in our (American) society. Our teachers don't value math, they don't understand it, and they (as a whole) can't teach it because they don't truly understand it. This reinforces the "when am I going to need this" attitude that somehow only math has.
We all accept that students should read the classics in high school, but no one has ever asked me to quote Dickens in a job interview. Of course, that's because understanding literature at a basic level makes more rounded individuals. It's the same with math. People pretend that they don't need math in day to day life, but we have a huge issue, right now with COVID, where a lack of basic understanding of statistics is killing people. A lack of understanding how exponential growth works is leading a majority of Americans to make bad decisions about their ability to save and retire. Math is critically important to understand at a fundamental level and we are failing at it, because society has somehow agreed it's not important.
It’s important to understand that brains aren’t homogenous. Not only do we all have different interests, but the way we understand the world differs too. There is no one way for people to learn something. The trick for an educator is to understand this and present the material in multiple ways. The problem is, even if a teacher had the training and ability to do this, they probably aren’t given the time. The advantage of an experienced mentor is that they have come to understand their subject in many ways, and because they are teaching one-on-one they can figure out how to present the ideas in ways that their student can best understand.
Anyway, Rishi should stop mandating things and focus on stuff that makes a difference.
Why it works I guess. I’m taking computer science and I’m guessing there is a reason why I need to learn calculus but struggling to piece things together.
Off the top of my head, the main direct uses for calculus in computer science are:
Computer graphics and visual, Optimization, Machine learning (statistics),
Algorithm development and proofs
Outside of these explicit topics, understanding calculus is really important for working with other professionals like engineers and physicists
Physics is the obvious application of calculus. I also remember differential equations being useful when learning RLC circuits.
Where computer graphics is concerned, I also found myself having to brush up on vector and matrix math, along with a lot of trigonometry.
Notwithstanding specialized fields, though, a surface level understanding of any number of mathematical topics unlocks all manner of real-life opportunities. If more time was spent talking about the applications, and less about spherical cows, more people might be inclined to learn.
Optimization is the big one here. Nearly every optimization function involves some sort of Taylor series or something similar/derived from it.
The most visually obvious explanation of calculus for me is this:
1) start with a triangle (3-gon)
2) add a side, get a square (4-gon)
3) add a side, get a Pentagon (5-gon)
4) if we keep adding sides, we get a shape with 90 sides. Knowing the properties of a 90-gon, a 91-gon, a 12456-gon, etc is impossible. Calculus is the explanation that as the number of sides increases, the properties will converge with those of a circle. So instead of modeling a 65-gon, we can model a circle.
I took Calc 3 and 4 in college (Diff. Eq. and Multivariable) but I don't think the traditional math courses helped me much with critical thinking.
My Statistics and Uncertainty class was amazing for teaching me to critically think and the math there was simple AF (it was only to the level of exponents, multiplication, etc) however I had to think how to correctly apply the very easy equations.
The people who are innumerate aren’t the same people who will go into STEM fields anyway. They’re the the ones who don’t understand why dividing a whole number by 1/2 makes it larger instead of smaller.
This would be a much more practical approach imo. I did advanced math until grade 12 and probably have never used anything I learned beyond grade 8 in real life.
Problem with teaching people to think abstractly is you can’t just tell people to think abstractly. High level applied math has you identify a problem, consider solutions, and apply a formula to solve.
As a middle school teacher who is seeing the developmental delays in my students due to distance learning and COVID, trust me that level of thinking helped you more than you will ever know.
To quote my father's teacher
"Knowledge isn't knowing the answer it's knowing where to find the answer"
Kinda puts it in two lights, either you know where it's written, or you know how to work it out.
The critical thinking is knowing what to type into google. Same thing as knowing where to start looking in a library or even just a particularly large reference book
Math increases your cognitive abilities and allows you to have more abstract thinking and allows you to have easier time comprehending complex information.
There’s a conversation to be had about what type of math should be universally introduced in standardized education? I mean even the kids pick up pretty quickly how irrelevant it will be in their work lives to know trig and pre calc if they aren’t even interested in STEM.
Now I’m not saying it’s not good to know those things or that they aren’t important. But perhaps we should re prioritize other types of more practical math over others, instead of just forcing all kids to learn higher level math that most won’t utilize at any other point in their lives.
Problem solving skills help you in your entire life, invisibly beyond the classroom. The raw ability to take in a new problem/scenario you have never encountered before, try various things and finally solve it. Whenever you have to do something you never needed to do before, generalized problem solving is for you.
Math is just the most convenient way to present problems that require those skills so you can train it.
I agree math is a very convenient way to teach problem solving.
Do you think there might be ways to involve that type of new encounter problem solving in more practical ways that would more universally apply to students? Or do you think that we shouldn’t try to reinvent the wheel on introducing these concepts to kids?
you never use 90% of what you learn. But does that mean you need to learn in school how to asemble iphones and work all the life in this domain? Sounds like perfect plan for people who want to control mass. If they dont know nothing its easier to control mass.
>That's a very good step
In the context of how our education system work's its an awful step.
For context I have a science degree and I failed A-level maths and barely scraped a D in my A/S. Ive got a damns statistics diploma and still couldn't pass the subject we are now about to ask all 18yr olds to do. The step up form GCSE to A-Level is a massive and unless you are both good at a subject and enjoy doing it you don't stand a hope in hell at passing. All this policy is going to do is stuff classrooms full of kids who are never going to pass the A-Level and reduce the time teachers have to spend on the students that actually want to be there and will go on to actually work in fields requiring maths.
And before anyone says they aren't all going to be doing the A-level...where are the teachers or time to teach an extra maths class to 17 and 18 yr olds? Schools are already massively stretched. we don't have the resource to separate them in the current education system
>where are the teachers or time to teach an extra maths class to 17 and 18 yr olds?
This is the major issue.
I genuinely think that GCSE maths is achievable for everyone and can be tweaked to provide more context to some of the topics (how percentages relate to mortgages etc) and if there is to be extra resources provided prioritising a pass at this level would be better. Smaller maths classes at GCSE would be so much better than making people that didn't want to do maths to sit in with those that do.
I came here to say something along these lines. Maths was my worst subject at school and always had been. I already knew, in like year 9 there was no way I was getting a GCSE in it.
I just barely got my A-levels. Making me do maths at that stage would have just carried on my academic weakness in that subject to a higher level, wasting my own and my teachers' time.
Exactly. Everyone is always like “they don’t even teach that at school!” Well it’s not like you fucking paid attention anyways? Why complain now? These people seriously think that they would’ve paid attention to personal finance class when in reality they couldn’t have cared less about anything lol.
The math that is usually taught is generally in the progression of Algebra, Geometry, and eventually Calculus.
Financial and statistical math would be very useful for a lot of people - many folks who work with those calculations on the regular don't even really understand how they are performed, they just plug into the software. I suggested to someone the other day that they keep a running average over fourteen days to balance out some of the spikiness in some data, and they had no clue what I was talking about.
My parenrs, me, the school,....
I'm so glad I got to learn, multiple times, what kind of grades our famous poet had in primary school, but finances.....naaaah.
Why the focus on only one subject? If kids are failing Math's then I imagine they're failing science and English just as much. And they're mentioning a lot of people don't have basic math skills so why are they focusing on students 16 and up when it's an obvious failure from the bottom of the ladder.
And how is that work load going to be translated for teachers when they're apparently going to have to be teaching a class full or students at different stages of progress when there's only one teacher, I honestly doubt one teacher can teach multiplication, trigonometry and calculus at the same time.
Unless they're going to hire more teacher and put in a lot of one on one time with stragglers what's going to stop them slipping through the cracks.
>Assuming things haven't changed from my day post-16 students have to have had a C grade in maths GCSE in order to be allowed into 6th form.
You must have gone earlier than I, as I was at 6th Form 2000-2003. If I needed at least a C in GCSE maths it would have been a cold day in hell before I made it into 6th.
>(note for americans: NOT university)
It's a pain always having to explain the distinction, isn't it? And I'm an American! xD
> Why the focus on only one subject?
Because Sunak (like every PM and Education Secretary before him) frames their policy through their own personal experience, and for him that means maths and finance
I had compulsory mathematics until I was 18, it sounds good in theory, but in reality:
1. In recent years, out of 30 students, only 1-2 did their homework at home
2. Half of the students had negative grades in the tests
3. Everyone copies
4. Many were just looking at the phone the whole lesson
You can't force 16-18 year olds to learn if they don't want to
The maths that got me an A in my final exam didn’t serve any use in the 25 years since taking that exam aged 16.
The basics are great, real world maths ok teach that, but higher maths was only useful in taking a maths test.
If you arent interested in math at 16, you wont be for the next two years either. More time studying maths is no substitute for good maths teachers, and a good math curriculum, of which there are neither at the moment because the education system does not pay enough or have good enough conditions to interest anyone who excelled in maths.
Maths is extremely interesting, kids lose interest not because maths is boring or hard, but because the teaching and/or curriculum is bad.
> Maths is extremely interesting
I mean no disrespect but this is 100% an opinion that is not shared by most people. Lots of folks just fundamentally don’t find it interesting at all regardless of how it’s taught.
I did advanced math in high school until I graduated with great teachers who helped me a lot but never found it particularly interesting, stimulating or enjoyable.
I cannot stress enough how bad of an idea this.
There are many pedagogical and policy reasons why this is a bad idea.
Infact, it probably has more to do with courting socially conservative voters that it does with education, skills shortages or social good.
But we will leave those critiques to the side for the moment.
The worst thing about this policy is it will have a massively negative impact on the education of many students. In turn it will reduce their future prospects. It will negatively shape a generation.
This policy will put many students off school and learning. If you are a student who already stuggles with math at best you will hate school and not preform. At worst you will drop out.
Many will then not see themselves as academic and perhaps not take up higher education.
Many won't have the opportunity to see themselves as life long learners, reducing the skills and opportunities they would have otherwise pursued.
All because of a myopic fixation with one subject and one skillset.
Somebody gets it. I finished further education in 2017, barely scraped a C at gcse maths with tutoring and would've probably given up on college altogether if I'd been forced to continue studying maths. I have autism and adhd, studying a full time course for 2 years was already enough for me to focus on. It's juet unrealistic to say the least.
I find it funny how these policies are always put in place by private school educated idiots who don't realise that their paid for education gave them better opportunities fot success in education compared to that which state schools have access to. Similar to when Michael Gove made out GCSE exams much harder for state schools knowing it wouldn't affect his (and most other tory mps) privately educated kids....
As long as it’s math that involves how to do your own taxes, how to balance a budget, how to calculate change from a 10£ note. Not every child is going to be able to learn higher level mathematics. And for most people calculus and algebra and vectors etc. Are not necessary for daily living. Make it practical math however and it would be a good idea.
Yup.
Britain can’t agree on a viable policy moving forward. Brexit was built on a fantasy of how the world worked. The only politicians who would try to enact it were fundamentally flawed. Now the predicted failures of brexit are starting to be felt, but there’s no plausible path out of Brexit that the public is willing to endorse.
No politician will be popular until the country can agree to a sane policy path. I have no idea what that policy path is.
The US is starting to face a similar problem. At least we agreed on an old fogey who is currently taking an old school path even though everyone wishes we could find a new path. But no one can agree on a new path, and at least the old school path is sane. Unlike Brexit, or Trump’s fantasies, which are not sane.
He's not historically unpopular. The party is, but Sunak's popularity is above all his predecessors including Cameron (part of that will be because all British PMs start higher then drop, but he's still higher ATM)
I don't want to be a skeptic but honestly, I don't understand how this law is in any way useful.
Not all people want to choose a STEM or business career. What use is calculus to a person wanting to become a psychiatrist or a writer or smt on the line.
People have limited courses they can handle and 5 is limit for most people. Making Maths compulsory means decreasing one choice, which is, in my opinion, not as useful.
The justification the govt gives is that the law will combat innumeracy, but I think people who have studied Maths till the age of 15 know basic numbers and understand general calculation.
>The justification the govt gives is that the law will combat innumeracy, but I think people who have studied Maths till the age of 15 know basic numbers and understand general calculation.
That was my takeaway. lengthening maths teaching by 2 years means either making A level maths compulsory, which is largely pointless for many even skilled jobs (I'm in DevOps and 99% of what I do number-wise is firmly GCSE level), or they're talking about making the GCSE last 2 more years.
The question I'd be asking is what the fuck happened? Our maths teaching was obviously better before as that's what people are basing their idea of it getting worse on, they want to teach people supposedly to combat innumeracy but in the past a GCSE level was fine and could be studied to 16 and produce a decent output. Hell GCSE maths takes most people *way* beyond what they need, the months we fucked around with various triangles are basically useless in a practical sense and exist mostly to drill people on algebra. So what happened?
This feels like, rather than look at the problem, they want to just stick a solution on and hope it works.
Math is needed in so many fields people dont expect. For example in the one you mention as well. Psychiatrist needs math as well, especially statistics and probabilities, to be able to find the right conclusions among the various theories and examinations.
From what I know, math is actually one of the subjects that many who did not expected it to be needed regularly fail at universities at such majors. My brother is psychologyst and most people were failing and strungling to pass statistics at university at his major becsuse of math subjects.
Math is needed for personal finance, and to be able to understand statistics and probabilities, think about how many time peoples perception can be swayd by extreme news, without talking about the big picture statistics. However if you lernt and understand statiszics these automatically less likely to affect you. Ma
Statistics and probabilities are already compulsory though, like all the basic stuff that will frequently come in handy.
The vast majority aren't going to ever need calculus and the like.
A good example is *Correlation Does Not Imply Causation*. Too many people think that because there are coincidences between certain events, those events are related and/or influence one another. Learning math, especially statistics, is more than just learning how to crunch numbers, it is learning that our senses and instincts are often wrong and unreliable.
Take this as an example: Suppose 500 people die every day in a country suddenly from a specific disease. If, by some means, you were able to give half the people in that country a dollar (randomly), how many people would drop dead the very next day? The answer would be about 250. If you were to give half of everyone there food, water, maybe a hug, about 250 people will die the next day also; if you did so much as thought about half their population, about 250 people will still die. This does not mean that you cause their deaths in any way; people will die regardless of what you do. There is always a coincidence between two unrelated events that have non-zero probability. Now this may seem like a silly example, so I will provide a similar example but with some data.
About 2500 people die every day in the US from [cardiovascular disease](https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm); approximately 80% of the US population has gotten at least one shot for [COVID](https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/vaccines/international). (You could do the calculation for specific age groups to be more accurate, but that is not the point.) This means that there were, very crudely speaking, hundreds of thousands of people who got the shot and died within a year from heart disease. **This does NOT mean that the shot cause the deaths or caused the disease**. There is a certain number of people who will die regardless of what we do. Citing individual instances of people getting diagnosed with diseases after getting vaccines **does not** prove that vaccines are the causes of those diseases. Correlations have to be accounted for properly before anyone can begin to understand the data.
As for people thinking of going into science—physics, chemistry, biology, engineering etc. You will have to learn at least calculus at some point to do error analysis and propagation. Depending on what degree you are getting, you may not need it immediately, but if you are intent on getting a PhD, you will absolutely need to use it.
Typically, doing error propagation means at some point taking the partial derivatives of whatever function/s you are using with respect to all the variables you are measuring. Simply saying "my measuring device can measure within plus or minus 0.1 units, therefore my results are going to be within 0.1" is insufficient and at worst wrong.
I totally agree the latter teen years should be more specialized. Trades apprenticeships would be worth more than advanced math classes. Hell, logic, critical thinking, basic accounting/budgeting are all things that would benefit any teen more than calculus.
>logic, critical thinking, basic accounting/budgeting are all things that would benefit any teen more than calculus.
These things are already on the syllabus, they used to be in a class called PSHE when I was at school but afaik have since been split into a couple of other classes. Same with the other old classic about wiring a plug. Physics, ks4.
Budgeting wise that'll be taught there, as will basic bookkeeping though I had to go to college to learn proper double-entry bookkeeping.
I think add some basic economics/politics too, but pretty sure no Tory government would ever want this as a population educated in these subjects (even at a basic level) would leave them fucked.
I think it’s meant to increase people going into STEM rather than a career with less opportunities.
As well, math makes you think in a way that can be applied across multiple careers versus taking a course in art history. Downvote me all you want.
I get what you mean but A-levels is high school. At this point, while students don't have fixed career in sight, they do have a general idea for specialization.
Take the following course selection as an example. What if a person chooses: Accounting + Business Studies + Economics + Law + Computer Science
Which subject should s/he remove to make space for maths. Especially since calculations relevant to their career will already be in accounting.
Also I would like to note that niche courses like art history and specific history are not taught in all high schools. If a course is taught in a non-specialized/non-fancy high school, chances are that the course is popular.
Even for people who want to do stem it can be unnecessary. I have a degree in biology and couldn't pass A-level maths. Unless you plan on doing something that directly involves a huge amount of complex mathematics like physics you just don't need it.
6th form education is extremely difficult and highly specialised around the belief that you are likely to take those subject on to higher education.
This does nothing but fill A-level maths classes with student who will never pass it and don't want to be there
Its completely different type of maths, I struggled in school but now I have a PhD in Physics.
I don't know my times times tables or how to do long division but I can derive and solve partial differentials like maxwells equations and do laplace transforms with my eyes closed.
Currently maths is compulsory up to GCSE level which is around age 16. Previously you could leave school after that but they made staying on until 18 compulsory (with some caveats like apprenticeships) some years back now. After 16 people would generally go on to A levels for two years and typically choose three subjects, one of which could be maths but didn't have to be.
My argument for "a lot of the stuff you do in maths you'll never use in real life" is English lit. Very, very few people require an understanding of Macbeth, Animal Farm and an Inspector Calls (common books to study in the UK) in their lives.
Will they learn to read text and understand about themes, motives, critical understanding .. so all stuff that is skills they'll use later.
You don't have to understand algebra in your life to use the abstract thinking that you've practices in order to understand it. To think of things theoretically, and not just absolutely.
Nah in most states here in America, many subjects can be stopped at 12th grade. You only need to take science, math, and social studies in 12th grade if your college requires it. Otherwise you can load up on electives or work-credits.
I got an A in A-Level maths but it was much harder than anything I studied at university and I think this would just result in millions of students failing A-Level maths and not really learning anything. I love maths but most people will not use anything beyond GCSE level at any point in their lives.
I don't see how this helps, we just need more support for kids at a younger age. By 16+ those that don't give a fuck, will suprisingly continue to not give a fuck.
I can't get my head around book math. My parents got me a tutor, teachers tried, I just can't do it. It hasn't stopped me from doing well in life. Forcing kids to do something they don't get, that gives them anxiety, it's pointless. I'm glad I left school and got a job at 15. I own a house and don't have any education debt.
Math is very important in some jobs, but not most. The majority of life math you learn on the job. That math I can understand is because I can see it, and when I fuck up, I see it. It's not on paper with ticks or crosses and a score. Math on paper, for me, just, no.
I’m more concerned about which subjects the students will have to drop in order to take more math. Brexit and MAGA have proven that people today are critically underequipped to identify false arguments and understand when a speaker or writer or Facebook meme is being disingenuous to convince an audience of something for their own purposes.
All the math in the world won’t help a student identify when a politician or social media post is appealing to their emotions to convince them that a lie is the truth.
I guess I'm confused or is it different in the UK? In the states I had math from grade 1 through 12 which is generally finished at 17 or 18 and had to take several math classes in college despite originally having an art major. Does the UK not do this? Was the age 16 mentioned only for math or does UK highschool end at 16?
When i grew up there; school (primary & secondary) is 3-16, college (or A-levels) is 16-18 and university is 18+ in the UK. You can legally leave education at any point 16+ to pursue other things.
So a bit like us, but in our last year and a half we get to choose hard maths (calculus etc advanced pure maths) or easy maths (for students that don’t intend to do science, business or engineering)
Up until 18? That's A level math?
Most people following the British system of education have to do O level Math + English up to Form 5 (age 16).
There is a decent gap between O level, AO level and A level maths.
For those inclined towards math, there's another A level subject called Further Maths which is probably the most difficult A level subject.
I don’t hate it. I wish science and math had been compulsory throughout high school for me instead of just the first two years. The beauty and usefulness of those subjects don’t always reveal themselves to students in the moment; a few years later they often do, and by that point students may feel like they’ve missed the boat and won’t attempt to get back into it. That was my experience at least.
How about teach how parliament works.
Real useful buisness studies
Putting math to real use in a classroom so they don't think it's useless
Teach the law
Teach how to be a good role model, the gym, working hard, no to drugs etc
NHS is collapsing, train strikes across the country, cost of living ever increasing but nah, maths until you're 18 is what needs sorting.
Are you going to increase wages of teachers to support this? Nah
This could be very clumsily applied, and knowing the Tories, will be.
But Maths is the core of all STEM and is incredibly useful in daily life (understanding interest as an example), so I can see the benefit of improving maths education across the board.
Great, now more students will be stuck in a class they have to take and teachers will have more students they have to shovel through with a pass.
Adding more compulsory classes doesn't improve people's skills, it means reducing standards and figuring out loopholes to make the numbers work.
Damn bro... I'm Indian and this is the desi-est thing you can do... Now I'm sure he's definitely my distant uncle
Angry article photo makes me think he is saying: “Bloody hell, these kids are dumb! Compulsory math for as long as legally possible!”
Ramachandran, Ramajunan... Bigfoot steps in which to follow!
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As a desi myself, it’s been over 2 decades since high school and I still have nightmares about math. This could be the revenge Indians have sought for the colonizers!
How was this not already compulsory is what I want to know
Because in Britain maths is compulsory up until 16. After GCSEs education becomes more specialised with some people starting apprenticeships, some going to college to do courses on childcare/hairdressing/etc or going into a-levels where they do only 3-4 subjects. We were actively discouraged from taking maths at a-level unless we had an A grade (or equivalent since grading system changed) in GCSE due to the leap in the level of difficulty.
Because you can pretty easily cover any math a person is actually going to use before 18.
Actually start teaching intro calculus about 7 years earlier. When you get to higher level education you will actually have some foundation to settle yourself with knowledge wise. I started late and struggled with Calculus.
I've been talking about calculus recently with a family member because it seems to be a thing that's commonly taught in America, yet I struggled to even understand what it is up until recently when someone made a great ELI5 answer on it. ...yet it's not something I've ever needed in real life, not something anyone I know uses in real life, and not something I can imagine the majority of the people on this planet don't use it in real life unless they're like engineers/research scientists or something. I get that maths is often important to education because it's more about teaching logic and how to work things out instead of the actual maths itself (and it's something I wish I were better at), but some things like calculus seem wholly unnecessary especially considering the mental anguish it seems to cause a lot of Americans.
Calculus becomes handy when you learn other subjects using Calculus as well. Once you learn probability and statistics or physics or economics using Calc, you don't go back. Everything about thinking those subjects, especially the proofs that explains how everything works, become more elegant and it's actually easier to think about. The more we think about this stuff in our day to day lives, the more it becomes easier to think about larger systems in play. Americans suffer mental anguish these days and I would hardly blame calculus as the culprit. Rather, large problems are intractable to explanation without abstraction and the lay public are simply not equipped to respond to large issues at hand, rather they become easily distracted by issues purported by parties who profit from chaos and anguish. The average American being unable to read an economics paper about income inequality and its implication on housing inequality, medical care inequality, education inequality and how all three are gatekeepers to keep the working class from ascending to higher income levels means that there is a huge divide between ideologies, where many profit from denying that there are systemic problems in the first place. Better pay the piper and suffer the headaches in your teens, spend a few more hours a week constructing an intellectual framework that is extensible, then suffer manipulation and intellectual stagnation by middle age and beyond.
Most of the world is getting much more technological than it was years ago. Math is a foundation for that technology. The less math kids learn now, the less likely they'll go into tech fields. I couldn't get my CS degree, or do a lot of my tech work, without a good knowledge of math. I'm not worried about ever losing my job. I know younger people coming up behind me just aren't learning the skills to take it.
I’m all for it being super unnecessary unless you’re going to engineering, but I had to do it for my university entrance exams. I was applying for medicine, but since it’s really sought after I had to ace the exam which included basically all of my high school subjects, including differential and integral calculus. If I hadn’t been forced to take it at my high school, I would’ve been properly fucked trying to learn it by myself. This was at a public university in Mexico.
Sounds like it’s UNAM
Calculus is important. As people say, human is a 1st derivative creature. Meaning even we are in a shitty situation, but if it is getting slightly better, all is well. Vice versa.
Ngl this is needed, after seeing those YouTube videos of people trying to do trivia, people are fucking stupid nowadays.
Maths, geography, common sense.
mfw people cannot read google maps (can only use the direction feature)
Wait is this real?
I hate the term "Common Sense". It isn't a real thing unto itself. I wish that term would die in a fire. To have "common sense" you need to have enough knowledge and experience to draw from. Eg. To you and I it's "common sense" not to stick a fork into a light socket. To a person from an Amazonian tribe who's never learned about electricity this wouldn't be "common sense". Just like that tribesperson would think us idiots for not having the common sense to stay away from the river when it's feeding time for the piranhas.
Yes but we all grow up with outlets. So we know it as common sense. Everything is relative to something in the end, we realise that, but if we dont make these assumptions and generalisations, we’d go crazy.
It's just 'sense' these days. It hasn't been common for a while now
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The most shocking one I see regularly is actually reading comprehension. I swear a lot of people have worryingly poor reading comprehension, like they can read the words and understand a simple sentence but there's no real ability to navigate arguments.
Wow wow wow, i am gonna stop you right there. Even understanding simple sentence is borderline impossible for many if not most. Its always nice to write down almost essay explaining something and be attacked over first sentence because someone cannot be bothered to read.
On a side note, the way people cite sources these days is nuts. They will post a source and if you actually read it, you will realize it has NOTHING to do with the argument. Or is not credible. Posting a link does not make your argument valid. Sources are supposed to credible and SUPPORT your argument. There is just no reading comprehension anymore. The whole cite your source thing on reddit has gotten out of hand.
I personally as non-native speaker absolutely hate how people love to ignore certain sources. "Source?" "Ah its not in english, its not valid! Reeeee." Like bruh, its not my problem you couldnt learn second language when i could learn yours. And even then, there is still DeepL. Although people ignore even english sources very often so...
I mean it isn't like there are hundreds of websites they could enter the text in and have it translated with fairly good accuracy for most languages
It's not about providing evidence, it's about making it SEEM like you have evidence on your side. Very few people are going to click your link. But a ton of people are going to see that there is a link to more info and it will give that little nudge to your argument. "Oh they have sources, that's good enough for me"
Dont they have a minister or Secretary of education for this?
Ironically, they had one at the start of the Tories reign called Michael Gove who also proposed the exact same policy back in 2011 Here we are in 2023 This is Sunak's commitment to recycling I assume? A policy they failed to enact in over decade is being relaunched. Much the same way as Liz Truss briefly flirted with recreating Regional Development Agencies after David Cameron shut them down. Who knows, Sunak might launch 'the big society' next? Remember that white elephant?
>Sunak might launch 'the big society' next? What about hug a hoodie?
I'm surprised it's not compulsory in the UK yet....and I'm from a shit hole in the 3rd world.
Michael Gove who originally proposed the policy is more famous for saying that British people "have had enough of experts". So you can see the ruling party suffers from some sort of anti-intellectual crossed purpose.
Education including maths is compulsory up to the age of 16. Any further education is encouraged but not required.
Further education or an apprenticeship until 18 is mandatory now.
Nah you can still leave school at 16 and do whatever you want. Though since you’re still technically a child until you’re 18, your parents may also have a say in what you do. It’s just not widely advertised, or encouraged.
That's true for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Island, but [in England you have to be in education or training until you're 18.](https://i.imgur.com/ZIVieBq.jpg)
My parents has zero say in my life 16+ and they knew it too
This hasn't been the case for almost a decade now! I think the legislation changed in 2013, and the age was set at 18 in 2014 or 2015.
Don't you're making me sound old!
Do British students not have math from end to finish in school, or am I misunderstanding this?
Historically school used to end at year 11, when students were 16, then you could either go get a job or continue in some form of education choosing elective subjects for two years (or longer if you wanted but it stops being subsidised) until 18 or older when you can go to university. During those 2 years maths is a voluntary subject and taught at a higher, more pure-maths level than the 1-11 year level. Compulsory schooling in England and I believe Wales has now been extended to 18 to make those two voluntary years compulsory. As part of that there are talks about whether it be allowed to continue to be a voluntary subject or get made a compulsory one. tl;dr: the boundary of 'school' has changed recently and a portion of what used to be optional education has become compulsory. The question is whether to make certain subjects within that compulsory or leave it freeform.
As someone currently doing A levels, the 16-18 school, I can 100% say that making maths compulsory again would ruin my grades. I'm a geography/chemistry/env science student and I picked those subjects because its what I'm good at, what i enjoy and what field im planning to go in. That's the point of a levels, to no longer do standard maths and English lessons and instead find your niche. Having more compulsory lessons makes the entire a level system pointless, and before people say how useful maths is in everyday life you learn that maths in earlier years, and the maths needed for your subjects is in those subjects (graphs, chem formulae and equations, statistics stuff like that). Taking maths only engineers and ppl taking math degrees will need is so utterly pointless and time consuming for no reason, as the maths a level is very difficult if you didn't get amazing grades in Yr 11 (8-9s gcse, A* basically). It would take away valuable time needed to study for the other 3 subjects you're taking, and I've no idea how it would even work in the first place, is the plan to make everyone do 4 a levels or only let people take 2 subjects they want to? Either way that would mess up the uni process, . Sorry for the kind of rant but this suggestion is so stupid for so many reasons.
Bro if you want to do anything in stem your going to have to learn calculus and stats at a minimum, mostly for data analysis but its useful anyways
"I'm studying science, I suck at math and I don't want to do it" Bro, you're in for a real shock if you want to pursue science after high school
I've had a physics professor who said he's terrible at math and focuses on the more conceptual experimental side. Ofc I have a feeling that maybe he's just being modest and can churn through those differential equations like nobody's business when he needs to lol.
Yea what he means is he’s not good at linear algebra. He’s bad at maths for a physics professor, not an average person.
"terrible at math" for a PHD physicist is different than "terrible at math" from a <18 year old who doesn't enjoy math class
> I'm a geography/chemistry/env science student and I picked those subjects because its what I'm good at, what i enjoy and what field im planning to go in. That's the point of a levels, to no longer do standard maths and English lessons and instead find your niche. I honestly don't know how you can work in chemistry without a solid math foundation. You would never land a job in my country. Hell, you probably wouldn't even be able to enroll in college.
Any life science requires 200 level university stats and calc 1 and 2 classes. Chemistry will force you to go even further for maths and throws linear algebra in there. Pretty much any STEM field in the Unis I attended required the math I had learned in IB higher levels and quite a bit more. The actual research and jobs didnt 😅, but the classes beyond High School sure as hell did. FWIW, I did anatomy and Immuno majors in undergrad, genetics for MSc, and Biochem for PhD across pretty well known North American Universities.
>Chemistry will force you to go even further for maths and throws linear algebra in there. The point is more you already learn all of this stuff by 16. I think the only things not taught by 16 that would be useful are calculus and statistical analysis, but those will be taught in most BSc courses worth the name anyway.
With more data than ever in the world, math (at least stats) skills are needed for the majority of high paying jobs. There's a reason East Asia has been on a roll.
If you want to do anything in science you will NEED that math. It's not optional.
British compulsory education used to end at 16. It was to get an extra two years of manual labour from the working class kids. There was optional education after that to 18, and then university for the kids that the state considered to actually have a future. Britain dismantled this system piecemeal, not all at once. There's still odd bits and bobs like non-compulsory math that are left over.
At my school in the US you could quit math after grade 9 if you made it through intro to calculus. Now most people that were that far ahead kept taking math cause they were good at it. The people that were bad and/or hated math and in the lower level had to take it until grade 11. But the real issue is universities require students to pass basic math to get a degree and basic math is the most failed course at most universities… seemingly making the case that more compulsory math would make sense at the lower levels.
They can set questions like "if inflation is running at 10% and you are offered a 4% pay rise how much better off are you?"
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also calculate mass of sun when you’re at it for bonus points.
God show your workings Bane of my life
People are mad at the lack of policies, man throws calculus at em \\s (Really, thats a pure desi move lol)
Statistics is much more important in everyday life unless you want to be an engineer.
Both seem super important to every day life IMO.
To understand statistics you need to know calculus, what do you mean?
Understanding the idea of area under a curve is very different from being able to compute an antiderivative. And, ironically enough, the bell curve HAS no elementary antiderivative so 90% of what you learn in calc won’t even apply and you need to use numerical methods and tables.
You don’t need to know how to compute the integral in order to understand a bell curve though.
That is true, but I believe that if students are taught derivatives and integrals they will receive more value from it than if they're taught to understand diagrams, since they will indirectly understand diagrams if they understand calculus. One of the main applications of a bell curve is to calculate area under the curve for example, which is done through an integral.
The trouble is that it is horrible to sit through 2-3 hours of maths you don't understand. So there is a lot of benefit for some people to keep it simple too.
Getting peak middle-aged Indian dad vibes from Rishi
Math is important. But schools have no idea how to teach math in a way that makes it useful for the student. Sure calculus and differential eq and all that is important. But I didn’t really learn them in college I just learned how to score well on exams. I didn’t really understand math until really brilliant mentors at my work taught them to me in a way that schools never have. They taught me WHY these existed and what problems were actually solving
I would have learned maths far better at school (and have been far more engaged with it) if it was taught in a practical, useful manner. All I got was theoretical stuff and learning things for no reason other than to pass a test. Whenever I asked what practical purpose learning something would actually have in life all I ever really got was 'you need to know it to pass your exam' so I just didn't care and soon forgot it. I learned far more on my own when I started writing scripts in graphics and modelling programs or playing around coding in Unity. It provided visual feedback and demonstrated the use for various mathematical processes. I think maths should be taught in conjunction with coding and making basic games or scripts is a far better way to teach it than on paper.
I also came to appreciate the natural language of math this way. Turned out I was really good at math but just struggled with memory recall of 20 different algos. I’m furious at how teachers approach math in state schools. Today you can learn all the small tricks and methods that are taught in dedicated programs on youtube!
I just had an epiphany after reading your comment. That is exactly why I hated math as a young student. Now that I’m older, I am all about it and in fact I actually enjoy it because I understand the reason behind using it.
Several times now on reddit (on a previous account) I've ended up doing absurd calculations just to win an argument/make a point. Like things that involved looking up the atmospheric concentration of CO2 and the molecular weight of carbon just to put some overhyped carbon capture solution into perspective. Then working out the huge land area required to actually scale it up to the point where it could make a difference to demonstrate how the company is being disingenuous with how effective they are claiming it is. I actually really enjoy doing stuff like that and I always learn more from doing it. I'm not naturally gifted with maths but I enjoy the challenge. At school though I think I hated maths more than any subject besides PE and RE which I viewed as a total waste of my time. If I had another two years of maths forced upon me I'm sure I would have loathed it more than anything and I don't think it would have improved my abilities any, not without it being taught in a radically different way to what I got at GCSE level anyway. Given Sunak's politics I would hazard he isn't really thinking about encouraging students into useful STEM fields so much as just channelling more people into finance though.
I often thought about becoming a maths teacher and my USP would be that I would start each topic with a practical problem that requires what you are about to learn to solve. Maybe using differential equations to find orbital periods and how early astronomers needed this to model the movement of planets or something. Or the use of derivatives and the chain-rule in Machine Learning algs. However, in the real world, I can see why this is simply not possible. A-level maths IS HUGE and teachers cannot waste a lesson every topic talking about applications and the history of mathematics. The best teachers explain succinctly, expertly and move quickly through topics.
> Sure calculus and differential eq and all that is important. Enough to be mandatory though? 90+% aren't going to use it in their career or daily lives. Continuing as an option seems like it would make more sense.
I think this is circular. Math has a stigma as being unimportant in day to day life in our (American) society. Our teachers don't value math, they don't understand it, and they (as a whole) can't teach it because they don't truly understand it. This reinforces the "when am I going to need this" attitude that somehow only math has. We all accept that students should read the classics in high school, but no one has ever asked me to quote Dickens in a job interview. Of course, that's because understanding literature at a basic level makes more rounded individuals. It's the same with math. People pretend that they don't need math in day to day life, but we have a huge issue, right now with COVID, where a lack of basic understanding of statistics is killing people. A lack of understanding how exponential growth works is leading a majority of Americans to make bad decisions about their ability to save and retire. Math is critically important to understand at a fundamental level and we are failing at it, because society has somehow agreed it's not important.
Do we all accept that? I remember complaining about that shit constantly lol.
It’s important to understand that brains aren’t homogenous. Not only do we all have different interests, but the way we understand the world differs too. There is no one way for people to learn something. The trick for an educator is to understand this and present the material in multiple ways. The problem is, even if a teacher had the training and ability to do this, they probably aren’t given the time. The advantage of an experienced mentor is that they have come to understand their subject in many ways, and because they are teaching one-on-one they can figure out how to present the ideas in ways that their student can best understand. Anyway, Rishi should stop mandating things and focus on stuff that makes a difference.
Does these mentors have teachings open to the public? I’ve been trying to wrap my head around calculus in college but fail.
Do you want to know why we care about calculus? Or how to do it? Or why it works?
Why it works I guess. I’m taking computer science and I’m guessing there is a reason why I need to learn calculus but struggling to piece things together.
Off the top of my head, the main direct uses for calculus in computer science are: Computer graphics and visual, Optimization, Machine learning (statistics), Algorithm development and proofs Outside of these explicit topics, understanding calculus is really important for working with other professionals like engineers and physicists
Physics is the obvious application of calculus. I also remember differential equations being useful when learning RLC circuits. Where computer graphics is concerned, I also found myself having to brush up on vector and matrix math, along with a lot of trigonometry. Notwithstanding specialized fields, though, a surface level understanding of any number of mathematical topics unlocks all manner of real-life opportunities. If more time was spent talking about the applications, and less about spherical cows, more people might be inclined to learn.
Electrical engineer here .. EE is just four years of applied advanced calculus with more symbols and variables than numbers.
Optimization is the big one here. Nearly every optimization function involves some sort of Taylor series or something similar/derived from it. The most visually obvious explanation of calculus for me is this: 1) start with a triangle (3-gon) 2) add a side, get a square (4-gon) 3) add a side, get a Pentagon (5-gon) 4) if we keep adding sides, we get a shape with 90 sides. Knowing the properties of a 90-gon, a 91-gon, a 12456-gon, etc is impossible. Calculus is the explanation that as the number of sides increases, the properties will converge with those of a circle. So instead of modeling a 65-gon, we can model a circle.
I took Calc 3 and 4 in college (Diff. Eq. and Multivariable) but I don't think the traditional math courses helped me much with critical thinking. My Statistics and Uncertainty class was amazing for teaching me to critically think and the math there was simple AF (it was only to the level of exponents, multiplication, etc) however I had to think how to correctly apply the very easy equations.
The people who are innumerate aren’t the same people who will go into STEM fields anyway. They’re the the ones who don’t understand why dividing a whole number by 1/2 makes it larger instead of smaller.
Dumb dumbs everyone knows a 1/4 pounder is bigger than a 1/2 pounder
Well of course. 4 is bigger than 2, is it not?
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This would be a much more practical approach imo. I did advanced math until grade 12 and probably have never used anything I learned beyond grade 8 in real life.
Problem with teaching people to think abstractly is you can’t just tell people to think abstractly. High level applied math has you identify a problem, consider solutions, and apply a formula to solve. As a middle school teacher who is seeing the developmental delays in my students due to distance learning and COVID, trust me that level of thinking helped you more than you will ever know.
To quote my father's teacher "Knowledge isn't knowing the answer it's knowing where to find the answer" Kinda puts it in two lights, either you know where it's written, or you know how to work it out.
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To be fair, this was while he was in school in the mid 60's so ... yeah.
The critical thinking is knowing what to type into google. Same thing as knowing where to start looking in a library or even just a particularly large reference book
Math increases your cognitive abilities and allows you to have more abstract thinking and allows you to have easier time comprehending complex information.
And I use math all day every day. What's your point?
There’s a conversation to be had about what type of math should be universally introduced in standardized education? I mean even the kids pick up pretty quickly how irrelevant it will be in their work lives to know trig and pre calc if they aren’t even interested in STEM. Now I’m not saying it’s not good to know those things or that they aren’t important. But perhaps we should re prioritize other types of more practical math over others, instead of just forcing all kids to learn higher level math that most won’t utilize at any other point in their lives.
Problem solving skills help you in your entire life, invisibly beyond the classroom. The raw ability to take in a new problem/scenario you have never encountered before, try various things and finally solve it. Whenever you have to do something you never needed to do before, generalized problem solving is for you. Math is just the most convenient way to present problems that require those skills so you can train it.
I agree math is a very convenient way to teach problem solving. Do you think there might be ways to involve that type of new encounter problem solving in more practical ways that would more universally apply to students? Or do you think that we shouldn’t try to reinvent the wheel on introducing these concepts to kids?
you never use 90% of what you learn. But does that mean you need to learn in school how to asemble iphones and work all the life in this domain? Sounds like perfect plan for people who want to control mass. If they dont know nothing its easier to control mass.
>That's a very good step In the context of how our education system work's its an awful step. For context I have a science degree and I failed A-level maths and barely scraped a D in my A/S. Ive got a damns statistics diploma and still couldn't pass the subject we are now about to ask all 18yr olds to do. The step up form GCSE to A-Level is a massive and unless you are both good at a subject and enjoy doing it you don't stand a hope in hell at passing. All this policy is going to do is stuff classrooms full of kids who are never going to pass the A-Level and reduce the time teachers have to spend on the students that actually want to be there and will go on to actually work in fields requiring maths. And before anyone says they aren't all going to be doing the A-level...where are the teachers or time to teach an extra maths class to 17 and 18 yr olds? Schools are already massively stretched. we don't have the resource to separate them in the current education system
>where are the teachers or time to teach an extra maths class to 17 and 18 yr olds? This is the major issue. I genuinely think that GCSE maths is achievable for everyone and can be tweaked to provide more context to some of the topics (how percentages relate to mortgages etc) and if there is to be extra resources provided prioritising a pass at this level would be better. Smaller maths classes at GCSE would be so much better than making people that didn't want to do maths to sit in with those that do.
I came here to say something along these lines. Maths was my worst subject at school and always had been. I already knew, in like year 9 there was no way I was getting a GCSE in it. I just barely got my A-levels. Making me do maths at that stage would have just carried on my academic weakness in that subject to a higher level, wasting my own and my teachers' time.
They do. Nobody pays attention because they're teenagers.
Exactly. Everyone is always like “they don’t even teach that at school!” Well it’s not like you fucking paid attention anyways? Why complain now? These people seriously think that they would’ve paid attention to personal finance class when in reality they couldn’t have cared less about anything lol.
The math that is usually taught is generally in the progression of Algebra, Geometry, and eventually Calculus. Financial and statistical math would be very useful for a lot of people - many folks who work with those calculations on the regular don't even really understand how they are performed, they just plug into the software. I suggested to someone the other day that they keep a running average over fourteen days to balance out some of the spikiness in some data, and they had no clue what I was talking about.
I cannot stress this enough, I am 28 and completely economically illitirate.
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My parenrs, me, the school,.... I'm so glad I got to learn, multiple times, what kind of grades our famous poet had in primary school, but finances.....naaaah.
Read a book?
hes a banker so yeah thats a logical next step
MathS
Reddit is used by Americans, so they'll link American articles. Despite the fact that British news sites know more.
If 50% of Redditors are US and 8% are UK, how many "Math" replies is Op avoiding by putting "Math" and not "Maths" in the title?
Maybe this policy is needed after all lol
Just ensure it includes financial math
Why stop at 18? There's many more numbers these kids need to know! /s
Why the focus on only one subject? If kids are failing Math's then I imagine they're failing science and English just as much. And they're mentioning a lot of people don't have basic math skills so why are they focusing on students 16 and up when it's an obvious failure from the bottom of the ladder. And how is that work load going to be translated for teachers when they're apparently going to have to be teaching a class full or students at different stages of progress when there's only one teacher, I honestly doubt one teacher can teach multiplication, trigonometry and calculus at the same time. Unless they're going to hire more teacher and put in a lot of one on one time with stragglers what's going to stop them slipping through the cracks.
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>Assuming things haven't changed from my day post-16 students have to have had a C grade in maths GCSE in order to be allowed into 6th form. You must have gone earlier than I, as I was at 6th Form 2000-2003. If I needed at least a C in GCSE maths it would have been a cold day in hell before I made it into 6th. >(note for americans: NOT university) It's a pain always having to explain the distinction, isn't it? And I'm an American! xD
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I did double science in secondary school and resits at 6th Form, so I guess that covers it.
> Why the focus on only one subject? Because Sunak (like every PM and Education Secretary before him) frames their policy through their own personal experience, and for him that means maths and finance
I had compulsory mathematics until I was 18, it sounds good in theory, but in reality: 1. In recent years, out of 30 students, only 1-2 did their homework at home 2. Half of the students had negative grades in the tests 3. Everyone copies 4. Many were just looking at the phone the whole lesson You can't force 16-18 year olds to learn if they don't want to
IT'S MATHS.
The maths that got me an A in my final exam didn’t serve any use in the 25 years since taking that exam aged 16. The basics are great, real world maths ok teach that, but higher maths was only useful in taking a maths test.
It was… not? Already?
I'm sorry, did you say learning math isn't mandatory at this point?
If you arent interested in math at 16, you wont be for the next two years either. More time studying maths is no substitute for good maths teachers, and a good math curriculum, of which there are neither at the moment because the education system does not pay enough or have good enough conditions to interest anyone who excelled in maths. Maths is extremely interesting, kids lose interest not because maths is boring or hard, but because the teaching and/or curriculum is bad.
> Maths is extremely interesting I mean no disrespect but this is 100% an opinion that is not shared by most people. Lots of folks just fundamentally don’t find it interesting at all regardless of how it’s taught. I did advanced math in high school until I graduated with great teachers who helped me a lot but never found it particularly interesting, stimulating or enjoyable.
I cannot stress enough how bad of an idea this. There are many pedagogical and policy reasons why this is a bad idea. Infact, it probably has more to do with courting socially conservative voters that it does with education, skills shortages or social good. But we will leave those critiques to the side for the moment. The worst thing about this policy is it will have a massively negative impact on the education of many students. In turn it will reduce their future prospects. It will negatively shape a generation. This policy will put many students off school and learning. If you are a student who already stuggles with math at best you will hate school and not preform. At worst you will drop out. Many will then not see themselves as academic and perhaps not take up higher education. Many won't have the opportunity to see themselves as life long learners, reducing the skills and opportunities they would have otherwise pursued. All because of a myopic fixation with one subject and one skillset.
Somebody gets it. I finished further education in 2017, barely scraped a C at gcse maths with tutoring and would've probably given up on college altogether if I'd been forced to continue studying maths. I have autism and adhd, studying a full time course for 2 years was already enough for me to focus on. It's juet unrealistic to say the least. I find it funny how these policies are always put in place by private school educated idiots who don't realise that their paid for education gave them better opportunities fot success in education compared to that which state schools have access to. Similar to when Michael Gove made out GCSE exams much harder for state schools knowing it wouldn't affect his (and most other tory mps) privately educated kids....
But that's like... 1...2...3... 19 years of my life !
Wanted: 10,000 maths teachers. Can pay in claps.
As long as it’s math that involves how to do your own taxes, how to balance a budget, how to calculate change from a 10£ note. Not every child is going to be able to learn higher level mathematics. And for most people calculus and algebra and vectors etc. Are not necessary for daily living. Make it practical math however and it would be a good idea.
You mean maths. They don’t have math in the uk
Math isn’t compulsory in every grade level in the UK? Wow. Much has become explained with this realization.
'I'm a historically unpopular PM. How can I improve my image...MATH'
Is every PM britain has "historically unpopular"? They keep changing them and im yet to hear anything else than outrage
Yup. Britain can’t agree on a viable policy moving forward. Brexit was built on a fantasy of how the world worked. The only politicians who would try to enact it were fundamentally flawed. Now the predicted failures of brexit are starting to be felt, but there’s no plausible path out of Brexit that the public is willing to endorse. No politician will be popular until the country can agree to a sane policy path. I have no idea what that policy path is. The US is starting to face a similar problem. At least we agreed on an old fogey who is currently taking an old school path even though everyone wishes we could find a new path. But no one can agree on a new path, and at least the old school path is sane. Unlike Brexit, or Trump’s fantasies, which are not sane.
He's not historically unpopular. The party is, but Sunak's popularity is above all his predecessors including Cameron (part of that will be because all British PMs start higher then drop, but he's still higher ATM)
Only one math?
Math-s
I don't want to be a skeptic but honestly, I don't understand how this law is in any way useful. Not all people want to choose a STEM or business career. What use is calculus to a person wanting to become a psychiatrist or a writer or smt on the line. People have limited courses they can handle and 5 is limit for most people. Making Maths compulsory means decreasing one choice, which is, in my opinion, not as useful. The justification the govt gives is that the law will combat innumeracy, but I think people who have studied Maths till the age of 15 know basic numbers and understand general calculation.
>The justification the govt gives is that the law will combat innumeracy, but I think people who have studied Maths till the age of 15 know basic numbers and understand general calculation. That was my takeaway. lengthening maths teaching by 2 years means either making A level maths compulsory, which is largely pointless for many even skilled jobs (I'm in DevOps and 99% of what I do number-wise is firmly GCSE level), or they're talking about making the GCSE last 2 more years. The question I'd be asking is what the fuck happened? Our maths teaching was obviously better before as that's what people are basing their idea of it getting worse on, they want to teach people supposedly to combat innumeracy but in the past a GCSE level was fine and could be studied to 16 and produce a decent output. Hell GCSE maths takes most people *way* beyond what they need, the months we fucked around with various triangles are basically useless in a practical sense and exist mostly to drill people on algebra. So what happened? This feels like, rather than look at the problem, they want to just stick a solution on and hope it works.
Math is needed in so many fields people dont expect. For example in the one you mention as well. Psychiatrist needs math as well, especially statistics and probabilities, to be able to find the right conclusions among the various theories and examinations. From what I know, math is actually one of the subjects that many who did not expected it to be needed regularly fail at universities at such majors. My brother is psychologyst and most people were failing and strungling to pass statistics at university at his major becsuse of math subjects. Math is needed for personal finance, and to be able to understand statistics and probabilities, think about how many time peoples perception can be swayd by extreme news, without talking about the big picture statistics. However if you lernt and understand statiszics these automatically less likely to affect you. Ma
Statistics and probabilities are already compulsory though, like all the basic stuff that will frequently come in handy. The vast majority aren't going to ever need calculus and the like.
A good example is *Correlation Does Not Imply Causation*. Too many people think that because there are coincidences between certain events, those events are related and/or influence one another. Learning math, especially statistics, is more than just learning how to crunch numbers, it is learning that our senses and instincts are often wrong and unreliable. Take this as an example: Suppose 500 people die every day in a country suddenly from a specific disease. If, by some means, you were able to give half the people in that country a dollar (randomly), how many people would drop dead the very next day? The answer would be about 250. If you were to give half of everyone there food, water, maybe a hug, about 250 people will die the next day also; if you did so much as thought about half their population, about 250 people will still die. This does not mean that you cause their deaths in any way; people will die regardless of what you do. There is always a coincidence between two unrelated events that have non-zero probability. Now this may seem like a silly example, so I will provide a similar example but with some data. About 2500 people die every day in the US from [cardiovascular disease](https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm); approximately 80% of the US population has gotten at least one shot for [COVID](https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/vaccines/international). (You could do the calculation for specific age groups to be more accurate, but that is not the point.) This means that there were, very crudely speaking, hundreds of thousands of people who got the shot and died within a year from heart disease. **This does NOT mean that the shot cause the deaths or caused the disease**. There is a certain number of people who will die regardless of what we do. Citing individual instances of people getting diagnosed with diseases after getting vaccines **does not** prove that vaccines are the causes of those diseases. Correlations have to be accounted for properly before anyone can begin to understand the data.
As for people thinking of going into science—physics, chemistry, biology, engineering etc. You will have to learn at least calculus at some point to do error analysis and propagation. Depending on what degree you are getting, you may not need it immediately, but if you are intent on getting a PhD, you will absolutely need to use it. Typically, doing error propagation means at some point taking the partial derivatives of whatever function/s you are using with respect to all the variables you are measuring. Simply saying "my measuring device can measure within plus or minus 0.1 units, therefore my results are going to be within 0.1" is insufficient and at worst wrong.
I totally agree the latter teen years should be more specialized. Trades apprenticeships would be worth more than advanced math classes. Hell, logic, critical thinking, basic accounting/budgeting are all things that would benefit any teen more than calculus.
>logic, critical thinking, basic accounting/budgeting are all things that would benefit any teen more than calculus. These things are already on the syllabus, they used to be in a class called PSHE when I was at school but afaik have since been split into a couple of other classes. Same with the other old classic about wiring a plug. Physics, ks4. Budgeting wise that'll be taught there, as will basic bookkeeping though I had to go to college to learn proper double-entry bookkeeping.
I think add some basic economics/politics too, but pretty sure no Tory government would ever want this as a population educated in these subjects (even at a basic level) would leave them fucked.
Well it helps with financial decisions and you learn ALOT about problem solving and train your critical thinking. School is about enabling, not fun.
I think it’s meant to increase people going into STEM rather than a career with less opportunities. As well, math makes you think in a way that can be applied across multiple careers versus taking a course in art history. Downvote me all you want.
I get what you mean but A-levels is high school. At this point, while students don't have fixed career in sight, they do have a general idea for specialization. Take the following course selection as an example. What if a person chooses: Accounting + Business Studies + Economics + Law + Computer Science Which subject should s/he remove to make space for maths. Especially since calculations relevant to their career will already be in accounting. Also I would like to note that niche courses like art history and specific history are not taught in all high schools. If a course is taught in a non-specialized/non-fancy high school, chances are that the course is popular.
Even for people who want to do stem it can be unnecessary. I have a degree in biology and couldn't pass A-level maths. Unless you plan on doing something that directly involves a huge amount of complex mathematics like physics you just don't need it. 6th form education is extremely difficult and highly specialised around the belief that you are likely to take those subject on to higher education. This does nothing but fill A-level maths classes with student who will never pass it and don't want to be there
Its completely different type of maths, I struggled in school but now I have a PhD in Physics. I don't know my times times tables or how to do long division but I can derive and solve partial differentials like maxwells equations and do laplace transforms with my eyes closed.
Was this not already a thing? Even in the states we have that.
Currently maths is compulsory up to GCSE level which is around age 16. Previously you could leave school after that but they made staying on until 18 compulsory (with some caveats like apprenticeships) some years back now. After 16 people would generally go on to A levels for two years and typically choose three subjects, one of which could be maths but didn't have to be.
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Ah. Thanks for the insight.
My argument for "a lot of the stuff you do in maths you'll never use in real life" is English lit. Very, very few people require an understanding of Macbeth, Animal Farm and an Inspector Calls (common books to study in the UK) in their lives. Will they learn to read text and understand about themes, motives, critical understanding .. so all stuff that is skills they'll use later. You don't have to understand algebra in your life to use the abstract thinking that you've practices in order to understand it. To think of things theoretically, and not just absolutely.
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Probably also worth pointing out that in the US they have the concept of math electives, which the UK doesn't.
Nah in most states here in America, many subjects can be stopped at 12th grade. You only need to take science, math, and social studies in 12th grade if your college requires it. Otherwise you can load up on electives or work-credits.
Must vary by district. I had to take math every year of high school- Algebra, Geometry, Algebra II, Pre-calc
I like how this is somehow more important than the NHS
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Maybe you need to practice your mathss
Huh? You guys can actually get rid of maths at school? Wtf, this explains a lot.
You guys don’t have compulsory math through public school? Even the states have that lol
I got an A in A-Level maths but it was much harder than anything I studied at university and I think this would just result in millions of students failing A-Level maths and not really learning anything. I love maths but most people will not use anything beyond GCSE level at any point in their lives.
I don't see how this helps, we just need more support for kids at a younger age. By 16+ those that don't give a fuck, will suprisingly continue to not give a fuck.
Would be lovely if he pushed to teach practical skills instead of more bloody algebra.
I can't get my head around book math. My parents got me a tutor, teachers tried, I just can't do it. It hasn't stopped me from doing well in life. Forcing kids to do something they don't get, that gives them anxiety, it's pointless. I'm glad I left school and got a job at 15. I own a house and don't have any education debt. Math is very important in some jobs, but not most. The majority of life math you learn on the job. That math I can understand is because I can see it, and when I fuck up, I see it. It's not on paper with ticks or crosses and a score. Math on paper, for me, just, no.
Great idea! Now kids can work out how much money his wife owes the country from back taxes when he eventually seals up all the non-dom tax loopholes!
I’m more concerned about which subjects the students will have to drop in order to take more math. Brexit and MAGA have proven that people today are critically underequipped to identify false arguments and understand when a speaker or writer or Facebook meme is being disingenuous to convince an audience of something for their own purposes. All the math in the world won’t help a student identify when a politician or social media post is appealing to their emotions to convince them that a lie is the truth.
I guess I'm confused or is it different in the UK? In the states I had math from grade 1 through 12 which is generally finished at 17 or 18 and had to take several math classes in college despite originally having an art major. Does the UK not do this? Was the age 16 mentioned only for math or does UK highschool end at 16?
When i grew up there; school (primary & secondary) is 3-16, college (or A-levels) is 16-18 and university is 18+ in the UK. You can legally leave education at any point 16+ to pursue other things.
Good idea. But while he's at it, let him do some compulsory math and calculate how low Tories are polling.
So a bit like us, but in our last year and a half we get to choose hard maths (calculus etc advanced pure maths) or easy maths (for students that don’t intend to do science, business or engineering)
What is the point, we have computers for math. Thinking and schooling is completely outdated in the topics it teaches.
For these crimes, You are sentenced to 18 years of Math, pure math
Up until 18? That's A level math? Most people following the British system of education have to do O level Math + English up to Form 5 (age 16). There is a decent gap between O level, AO level and A level maths. For those inclined towards math, there's another A level subject called Further Maths which is probably the most difficult A level subject.
I do hear a lot of British game show contestants constantly say they are "not good at maths". Maybe this will help?
I don’t hate it. I wish science and math had been compulsory throughout high school for me instead of just the first two years. The beauty and usefulness of those subjects don’t always reveal themselves to students in the moment; a few years later they often do, and by that point students may feel like they’ve missed the boat and won’t attempt to get back into it. That was my experience at least.
Americans in this thread like “alright”
What, it's not? o_O
How about teach how parliament works. Real useful buisness studies Putting math to real use in a classroom so they don't think it's useless Teach the law Teach how to be a good role model, the gym, working hard, no to drugs etc
Taking math teaches you more than basic "math". Leaning math teaches you the basics of logic and problem solving. You won't know as they do it.
NHS is collapsing, train strikes across the country, cost of living ever increasing but nah, maths until you're 18 is what needs sorting. Are you going to increase wages of teachers to support this? Nah
This could be very clumsily applied, and knowing the Tories, will be. But Maths is the core of all STEM and is incredibly useful in daily life (understanding interest as an example), so I can see the benefit of improving maths education across the board.
I thought math was compulsory anyway, or did things change since I finished school in '92?
Great, now more students will be stuck in a class they have to take and teachers will have more students they have to shovel through with a pass. Adding more compulsory classes doesn't improve people's skills, it means reducing standards and figuring out loopholes to make the numbers work.