Maths syllabus doesn’t add up

Education Minister Ruairi Quinn really outdid himself when he suggested that primary teachers should have higher-level Leaving Certificate maths as a prerequisite for entrance to college.

(This is the same minister who has presided over an actual dumbing down of the same syllabus for those who really will need high-level maths — particularly our engineering students.) One has to ask: Ruairi, do you actually even know what is on that syllabus? How often will our national school teachers need to state the modulus of a complex number, or integrate a polynomial?

Does Minister Quinn even know what these are, I wonder? What we need are teachers with human qualities who can manage a classroom of small children and teach them, with a bit of inspiration, the basics suitable for their age. That doesn’t go much in maths beyond fractions, decimals, and percentages.