A few thoughts on mathematics and school mathematics

[ex_pipistre]

I've been increasingly frustrated with the way mathematics is taught in school- both in my school and by the attitudes of some of the people on my course

Comments

[ronaldraygun]

This post makes me feel ambivalent about teaching mathematics. I'm thinking of doing a Grad Dip in education once I finish Honours and teaching in a high school so that kids can have access to a teacher who a) knows mathematics beyond what's in the textbook and b) can answer the question "Siiiiiiiir, why do we need to know this

[ex_pipistre]

Sorry- I just saw this.
You should so be a teacher!
All the research agrees with us, by the way, so we're not talking bollocks. ;)
Teaching for understanding and connections is where it's at.

[tintaglia30]

I mostly, almost completely agree with this

[alicated]

I mostly agree with you on this point. My only disagreement is you saying there's no difference in intelligence or ability between the kids in the bottom and top sets. Of course, quite a few kids in the bottom set are there due to socially constructed differences but some people are simply just weaker when it comes to maths. I'm confident in my intelligence and have a high 2.1 in Geography, but I was in bottom set for maths and struggled to get a C in my GCSE. I'm sure with better teaching and the approach you're suggesting I could have done a fair deal better, but my brain is simply unable to handle the kind of work that my peers in set A1 were flying through.

Interestingly, though, the bottom set was tagged with a sort of 'low ability' mindset. (And we were a grammar school!) The combination of teaching content and being tagged as low achievers pretty much made most of us give up on maths by year 10 and learn the minimum needed to scrape through.