Don't Short-Change Our Children's Future

Following on from last night's brief polemic, which itself was spawned - as usual - from a conversation between Jane and myself earlier yesterday; I picked up on a letter in today's Financial Times from someone in Birmingham, city of our birth. In response to the PM's ridiculous assertion that compulsory mathematics be force-fed to all until the age of eighteen - unenforceable, as one can leave school legally at sixteen, anyway - Sandie Hobley rightly points out that, beyond the basics of arithmetic, rudimentary trigonometry and geometry, and I would hazard most importantly, estimation and - heaven forfend - the multiplication tables so hated by modernists, we need little else from maths to sustain us in a our numerical travels through life. 

Unless you are an engineer engaged in the complexities of dynamic physical systems, or some such, you ain't gonna need the calculus: any calculus. Unless you are engaged in the abstrusenesses of operating system design, complex set theory and discrete mathematics are kind of surplus to requirements. All of these things can be learnt at upper secondary level, by which point you will have pretty much decided which career path you want to follow, anyway.

So the blanket enforcement of disciplines unnecessary to ninety percent of the population will achieve nothing, and as Hobley points out, will simply be costly to the state: either directly through the extra tuition costs required, or simply because the basics have been bypassed in favour of the abstruse and arcane: if children are alienated from the basics of making change & estimation; of approximation and rapid assessment through mental arithmetic and - yes, rote-learned tools such as tables - they will be less able to interact successfully with the world, and it will make them less productive as a result.

But maybe that is exactly what the powers that be want, for this demographic would then be easier to capitalistically control [read 'fleece'], as they would take for granted whatever nonsense was planted before them [check your grocery bill against your basket at checkout some time, you might be surprised at the discrepancies that often show up]: the tools for their independence taken away from them before they've even learned of their existence. We owe our future generations more than this paucity of basic knowledge, and they certainly need to learn how to walk before they can run. Compulsory calculus? Do me a favour. Learn it if you will or need to to, but it won't tell you if you are being short-changed or over-charged in your local hyper-mart...