Would you openly advertise that you couldn't read or write? Very few will. But people will openly admit to not being able to do "maths". A report by a new group called National Numeracy claims that just under half of adults have the numeracy skills expected of an 11 year old and only about a fifth of adults are capable of gaining a C grade at GCSE.
The body is unfortunately fronted by Carol Vorderman who is not only awful but also knows absolutely nothing about education beyond her personal experience as a student. The report does have a point though, and is absolutely correct when it says that being poor at maths is a "badge of honour" and a "British disease". Celebrities are cited, even named and shamed as openly admitting to being awful at maths, usually followed by a laugh on a chat show. I invited our local MP into school recently and he even asked why we we bothered with algebra, which is like asking why you need bricks to build a house, which is encouraging!
Once again the kicking of the teaching profession begins - all students should be enthused when it comes to mathematics, despite clear and obvious parental/family influence to hate the subject. The government has repeatedly said in the recent past that they would like all students to continue with mathematics until the age of 18, for no other reason than other countries do it. I want an ipad2 because loads of my friends have one, but it won't make me any more efficient as a person, in fact it may well lead me to neglect other areas of my life. Totally pointless.
Maths teachers are under-qualified and lack the knowledge to enthuse and stretch their students, apparently. The desire of both government and National Numeracy is to get the top graduates, those with first class or upper second class degree to become teachers. Good luck with that - quality mathematicians are few and far between and will almost certainly be offered (and accept) jobs that pay far more than that of a teacher, and could well be less stressful. Those who do end up teaching (it sounds worryingly like the bum deal, doesn't it?) are perfectly well qualified to stretch the students and make the subject accessible. Politicians are dreaming if they think that teaching is currently a desirable profession.
The problem is that the politicians (people who talk about stuff, but actually do very little) are targetting the wrong people. Those they need to target are the pupils, their families and their attitude towards maths rather than the teachers and the curriculum. The curriculum is essentially fine, although the questions could be more geared to real-life situations i.e a little more relevent. The problem is that many children refuse to even attempt the work despite the best efforts of their teachers, and this behaviour is condoned by all the parents of those children who immediately say at parents evening that they can't help because they are rubbish at the subject. Giving up in maths is seen as acceptable to everyone but a teacher.
My "solution":
Educate the parents as well as the children. I already teach an after-school course for parents at our school, but funding is limited and take up is relatively low. It needs to become an embarrassment to be poor at maths and those who should be getting the snide comments should be those who are poor mathematically rather than those who are good at the subject as currently happens. No-one wants to be embarrassed, so people need to be embarrassed when they have insufficient skills in the subject - it should force them to improve. Enough of the covering in cotton wool, these people need to know the truth.
There is another point to be made: I think that what the politicians mean is "numeracy" rather than "maths". Maths involves pretty complex stuff that you wouldn't necesarily expect most people to understand or use outside of the classroom, although you'd be surprised at the uses of some mathematics. Numeracy is a necessity for people to function efficiently in the real world - stuff like percentages and fractions of a numbers, estimation. No wonder so many people get into horrible debt (including some mathematicians!) if they don't understand the interest they pay (percentages) and how much they're spending (estimation). I had a conversation with a class with whom I was teaching linear graphs, when one child asked what they were used for. I suggested a profession as an example amongst many, to which a few said "Oh, I don't want to do anything like that, so I don't need to learn this".
When anyone asks me when they are going to use this in later life, I now have a standard reply, which is: "During your GCSE exam, which will lead you on to a job decent job, assuming that you get a decent grade".
Still, it's all their teachers' fault, not a dreadful national attitude towards the subject.
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