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Dumbed-down maths won’t fuel smart economy
By Paul Mills
Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve enjoyed the spectacle of the Olympics at London 2012 and rejoiced in Irish competitors winning their various medals.
Sure, we would have liked to have done much better but given our size, our limited investment in sport, particularly in elite sport, and, indeed, the limitations forced on us with the current capacity of our economy, we are happy with our success.We forget at our peril how each of those individuals, from Katie Taylor and her fellow boxers to Cian O’Connor, actually achieved that success.
It was through hard work and persistence and striving to be the best. It was not through accepting “that it will be alright on the night”.
Given those lessons and the myriad of others that abound, it’s hard to understand why the Department of Education and its minister, Rory Quinn, are trying to ram through what is widely seen as a dumbed down mathematics curriculum — Project Maths. Our political genes seem to dictate that we continue to think that even if the whole world tries and fails with a new system or a new way of doing something that somehow we can make it work. We have repeatedly proved that we cannot.
Team GB was particularly successful at the 2012 Olympic Games because of the extra effort it put into the specific sports where it believed its team members could accrue a competitive advantage, where they could compete with the best and succeed.
Over the last several decades under Labour leadership, the UK tried to underpin the view that everyone is equal and that everyone should be a winner. Competition at school level was effectively minimised.
Everyone who took part got a medal or an award. It ignored that fact that everyone is not equal. We are all different, with different skills, different strengths, and different ambitions. We should all be given an equal and fair crack of the whip. However, we are not equal. David Cameron has seen this and has vowed to turn back the clock and reintroduce competitive sport and competition back into the school system.
Pretending or, worse still, persuading people for political advantage that we are all the same with the same capabilities, the same capacity and the same ambitions, only makes fools of us.
We have been repeatedly told that our future is as a knowledge economy. However, a knowledge economy is not, or will not be, secured and maintained by dumbing down maths. Industry and, indeed, the educational system has been concerned for sometime at the grades obtained in Leaving Certificate maths.
However, you do not improve the quality of the Leaving by reducing the quality of the subject.
Sure, you will get more people passing and even getting higher grades. You will not, however, get better or more qualified graduates. Pretending otherwise is the work of an idiot. As John Brennan of the Ballinteer Institute is quoted as saying: “It is all fur coat and no knickers.” It might please the youngsters taking exams for a short while, but it will not fool industry.
Such an approach sends the wrong message to industry. In a world where competition is getting tougher and tougher, we are doing ourselves no favours by trying to impose a populist solution. Government and Mr Quinn need to take off their blinkers before it’s too late.
Compensating for inadequate numbers of qualified maths teachers by effectively making a course easier is not the answer. It’s a bureaucrat’s cop-out. We should employ adequate numbers of qualified teachers at whatever grades are necessary.
We should up-skill those teachers already in place. The last thing we should do is try to be the electorate’s friend and simply move the problem down the line.
business@examiner.ie
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