Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

> "The prime minister needs to show his working: he cannot deliver this reheated, empty pledge without more maths teachers," shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson said.

Correct. Important context for this is the ongoing balloting for strike action over teachers pay. Anyone who can do maths can read their own payslip and know when they're better off in the private sector doing anything else. The recruitment shortage is serious: https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/203/education-com...

> A 2022 report by the National Foundation for Educational Research shows that the teacher supply challenge is marked particularly by a lack of physics, chemistry and maths teachers. For physics, only 17% of the target to recruit 2,610 trainees was achieved, with only 444 new entrants. The Committee was recently told that at this current level of supply, it would be impossible to carry out the Prime Minister’s proposal of requiring pupils to study maths until 18.

In other words, this is already impossible, and no amount of "mindset changing" (wishful thinking) is going to change otherwise. You're only hearing this now because the local elections are soon.

lol

> Underpay and overwork teachers while using them as pawns in your transphobic culture war, so that they constantly strike and quit in their thousands

> Economically isolate the UK and cripple all its key public services while still somehow failing to cut most people's tax bill

"My economy is unhealthy because people aren't studying enough maths, I will have my army of teachers fix this problem".

I don't understand; surely teacher supply is a relevant factor? More/better/less strained teachers encourage people to want to study maths, and help them do so.

I think it's relevant, but it's not the only thing.

My personal experience as a Brit is that the UK has a growing trend of anti-intellectualism and being innumerate is "cool" in certain circles.

It's been there for a very long time. I suspect some of it is systemic (private schools feeding into the top tier universities).

Private schools feed into the top universities because the private schools provide actual education. The problem isnt that private schools are too good or that private schools educated people get better grades.

The problem is that the majority of pupils in state schools, be they intelligent or not intelligent never stand a chance and are recieving a terrible formal education.

Are you prepared to devote the resources necessary to provide class sizes in 'state' schools in the UK that match the class sizes found in private (i.e. 'Public') schools?

Might cost a bit.

I am, many are not - in the timeframe of an election cycle it is wasted money. The money spent today would only show positive returns in 10-20 years time.

State school in the UK costs the governement £7,100 a year per pupil vs £13,700 a year for private schools (averages). The government is getting poor value for money, but it would cost ~50bn a year to send every secondary state school pupil to private schools.

It is cheaper to simply pander to your base, make the next generation of their offspring dumber and blame the foreigners or the rich people or boats or whatever gets people angry. It actually increases the size of your political base, with the only downside that it dumps your future party with a massive social welfare bill in the distant future. By then they will be burying you at a state funeral, and your decendants will be living offshore somewhere nice talking about how great the country was back in your day.

The UK has had enough of experts

that would explain how it came to the Brexit mess.

Goes back a long way, c.f. C. P. Snow and the Two Cultures book or article in the 50s. Before that Charles Babbage had something to say about the state and teaching of mathematics in British universities.

My personal view is that there has to be a wider discussion on what 16 to 18 education is actually for in the UK, or at least England and Wales (Scotland has a different system, not sure about the Province).

To what extent do we have specialised often vocational courses for students? Do GCSE exams at age 16 still actually have a function?

Then you can have a discussion about the role of quantitative and logical thought in whatever system you decide to have.

PS: I'd keep mathematicians at least 50 miles away from any committee working on this. Nice people, but a tiny minority of the communities of practice who use mathematics to make decisions.

Growing, or just large?

I ask because "The Two Cultures" was 1959: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures

Even where people recognise the value of maths, some of the responses I've seen to this use rhetoric-disguised-as-maths such as this: https://nitter.net/Samfr/status/1647717775777972224

"They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool. 'Til you're so fucking crazy, you can't follow their rules." - John Lennon - Working Class Hero

Reply on news.ycombinator.com