How can a person be correct for so many wrong reasons?
Forcing maths on the youth till age 18 is doomed to succeed. This is a further effort to separate the working class from the ruling class. The Tories are already planning to refuse student loans to students who do not achieve a threshold number of 16 and post-16 qualifications. This is a back up to create yet another reason to deny higher education to the most disadvantaged youth. And it will likely work if it goes ahead.
Sunak is not concerned with the level of maths education in Britain. He is not trying to raise that level. It’s hard enough getting working class boys to concentrate on maths between ages 11 and 16, never mind another two of abstract mathematics.
I could be misinterpreted, here. I am not saying that poor kids can’t learn maths. Far from it. I’m saying that learning anything requires resources, time, quiet, and (intrinsic) motivation. None of which is generally available for kids in state schools, with 40+ students to a teacher and an assistant, without enough pens, paper, or textbooks to go around the class, and where the children are hungry and tired, wondering whether they’ll be harassed by the police on the way home.
At the same time, those like Sunak go to school costing £000s and will have whatever private tuition is necessary, plus unlimited resources, computers, private libraries, and quiet rooms of their own in which to study. And if they still fail, daddy will write a letter to the Dean or the CEO.
Free school lunches for all. Max class sizes of 20. Support classes for all who need it. Proper funding for and inclusion of pupils with learning difficulties. Guaranteed spot in university – for free, for all, including accommodation and food – with guaranteed, relevent employment afterwards. You won’t need to force anyone to learn; they’ll be fighting for the chance to do so.
Before all this, a good start would be to make maths relevant. Explain the maths behind the logistics of inviting and managing 20–40,000+ people at a sports event or music festival. Explain the maths involved in putting up a house or building a road. Explain in numbers how and how much value supermarkets steal from their workers. Explain how all the money that could be spent on education disappears into tax havens. The pupils might want to learn maths, then. But short of most of these measures, the article is right that forcing pupils to learn maths till age 18 will not be successful.
The “China Bad Times” com cannot compete with the actual shit the west pumps out. The libs have figured out how become immune to parody and it is to become the parody.
I’m afraid they’ve beaten us at our own game… how embarrassing… I’m sure we’ll surpass them once the next episode of the spoon wars comes out.
I think you’ve basically nailed it here. The goal is to make sure that poor kids get the bare minimum of education needed for them to toil. Higher education will be reserved for those who can afford private schools.
And my view is that it’s good for schools to teach a breadth of topic so that kids can get exposure to them and focus on the ones they find interesting. Giving students exposure to different aspects of math is useful, doing an in depth dive into these domains shouldn’t be forced.
Honestly I’m jealous of them as an American. I’m not up to date on national averages, but when I was in high school (in the south, poorer area) our local math exam averages were legit between 25-30% or so. This obviously is atrocious and hurts people not even focusing on math in their career since math is a huge part of the ACT and SAT grades. Now I’m an adult who doesn’t know how to do math at all and wanna go back to college and it’s massively limiting. It is so tough as I don’t have the money for a tutor or anything.
Personally, at least locally, I think they’re doing it on purpose to privatize education as much as possible. Where I live they are making the schools as shit as they to encourage the multiple local private academies. Our main private academy here gets huge amounts of tax dollars and it still costs like 2,000 per year per kid. Their scores of course are much higher, and each class has like 15 people.
if she wants british people to remain mathematically subpar, it’s fine by me.
It’s not just bedtimes they are pissed about now but being made to attend school and learn.
Evil tankies educating the people
To be fair, math can be really frustrating at times. /s
I like how the picture for the article is Xi when the only way China is related is from an offhand remark at the end of the article.
Idk how it can get more blatant
Communism no iPhone but communism math >:(
lol she even put the Soviet Union in the mentions, typical liberal
The ultimate bogeyman, love how USSR still terrifies the liberals 30 years after its dissolution.
The horror.
but kids and teenagers don’t know whats best for them, that’s why we have things like schools to help them learn things like math, for their own good and for the betterment of society.
