The Education Vector

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 17

The Education Vector¶

October 1994

Editor Ian Clark

This Education Vector has been reprinted from VECTOR Vol.11 No.2. VECTOR is the Quarterly Journal of the British APL Association. For more information about the British APL Association, please contact: Anthony Camacho, [address and telephone number omitted].

Contents¶

Ian Clark
IAC/Human Interfaces, [address omitted]
[telephone number and e-mail addresses omitted]

Editorial¶

by Ian Clark

Welcome to another edition of Education VECTOR. This goes to press just before APL’94, so whatever enlightenment emerges during the symposium will just have to wait for the next issue.

A teacher friend I saw recently congratulated herself on getting through the first week of term. Her face wasn’t grey and the lines on it were fading (I thought) so she must have had a good summer holiday. With the unions all set to continue their boycott of the compulsory testing of the National Curriculum and the Government still striving to re-introduce the eleven-plus in one form or another, with amateur markers to swell the ranks of amateur inspectors, no doubt all riding to work on trains directed by amateur volunteer signalmen, this has got to be the Golden Age of the Amateur Volunteer.

Nowhere is this more evident than the teaching of Mathematics. A recent report on the sorry state of mathematics teaching seems to lay the blame squarely on Primary Schools. Primary teachers might justifiably wonder what it is the country really wants of them. To be the saviours of the next generation? Or to serve as whipping boys for the undesirable side-effects of a society governed by market forces and other gods of darkness? If mathematical skills are to be costed on their current market value by sector, is it any surprise that they’re tending to accumulate in the faster end of the financial sector and desert the junior end (and upwards) of the educational sector?

For years those further up the educational tree have been telling the primary schools that all they require of them are children able to go to the toilet without supervision, tie their own shoelaces and write their own names. Leave the fancy stuff to those better qualified to teach it. Now it emerges that primary teachers have to carry the can back for the state of Mathematics throughout the entire system.

This isn’t the place to discuss the role of specialist teaching in primary schools. Nor the evidence for and against the existence of things called pre-mathematical skills. But I do think that those responsible for the staffing and remuneration of schools should not hide from criticism behind the honest attempts of others to put into effect the results of their own loose thinking. I remember seeing a report, at least six or seven years ago now, about the teaching of Mathematics in both primary and secondary schools in England and Wales. It furnished figures to show that at least 70% of mathematics teachers had no recognisable qualifications in mathematics beyond O-level, and that perhaps 90% were teaching the subject far above the level at which they were technically qualified.

Now never mind the reasons for this state of affairs and why it cannot be otherwise. Never mind asking whether they are doing a good job. Never mind wondering how to compel them to do a better one, by performance related pay, say, or testing their pupils at frequent intervals with nationwide tests. The question we want to ask ourselves is — no, not whether we’re feeling lucky, but whether we would tolerate such a situation in the teaching of French, say, or Spanish.

Now I have a shameful admission to make. I hardly know a word of Spanish (except one or two I learnt from reading Hemingway, which it seems I don’t pronounce correctly anyway). Yet, if Spanish were to be treated as Mathematics is at present, I could be recruited to teach PE, RE or any other ‘E’ for which I might be qualified, then directed to teach Spanish throughout the school. Would any blame attach to me if some official Spaniard came along and castigated my teaching (I think that’s the word)? In a fair and just society, not at all. The blame would lie with the headmaster, or rather with those who made up the rules which forced the headmaster to contemplate such a ludicrous step. And ultimately, in a democracy, that’s all of us. The headmaster might turn round and say he couldn’t get anyone who really knew Spanish for love or money. Market forces, again. But what a slur on our society, and those who lead it.

The government have shown time and again in other spheres that it is possible to manipulate market forces. In fact they’ve spent billions doing so. Let them do so in the sphere of Mathematics teaching, if we all agree it’s so important for the future economic health of the country.