Curios of the week #66

Clippings, endnotes and other ephemera

Image via AI

I am no longer a teacher of Economics and so some balance has been restored to the universe. I have, however, picked up some Year 7 mathematics. This week, we began an algebra skills topic — writing algebraic expressions, collecting like terms, expanding brackets and so on. It is the sort of stuff that lends itself well to a brisk pace and plenty of whole class practice. Given that we unashamedly embrace explicit teaching at Clarendon, it becomes an efficient way to build skills.

If I were a mathematics teacher persuaded by educationally progressivist ideas, this would be anathema. Instead, if such teachers ever deal with these skills at all, they would pick their way towards them in complicated contexts. And that’s a big ‘if’. I can image broadsides against ‘rote memorised procedures.’ We sometimes assume that curriculum and teaching methods are independent of each other but here is an example of where they are entangled.

This week’s curios include a job opportunity, learning styles, Professor Jo Boaler’s latest article and much more.

Ultracrepidarian of the week

This is starting to become a regular feature.

This week, Professor Richard Murphy who, according to his Twitter biography, is an, “Economic justice campaigner,” and, “Professor of Accounting Practice, Sheffield University,” took a turn to sound off about the school mathematics curriculum. Trigonometry, he declared, is useless and removing it from the curriculum should even be a UK election issue.

At one level, it’s tempting to meet Murphy’s argument that he has never used trigonometry with, “Well, that’s because you decided to enter accounting instead of, say, carpentry or architecture,” but even this misses the point.

The argument Murphy makes about mathematics can and has been made about pretty much any aspect of the curriculum, from studying Orwell or Ancient Rome, to learning about Oxbow lakes. Take any discrete item of the curriculum and it is possible to argue it away on these grounds.

However, the case is never prosecuted with as much passion as it is when mathematics is in the dock. We hold maths to a standard to which don’t hold other subjects. We see no intrinsic worth, only its mundane uses in everyday life, such as adding up change at the supermarket — a skill growing obsolete.

It’s not as if viewing schools as purely utilitarian training for work and life is a new idea. It is a current in educational progressivism that goes back over a hundred years. The problem is that designing a curriculum around such questions makes it dull, trivial and oddly transient. We end up training students in technologies that are going to be just about finished in 10 years. I remember being taught how to justify text in a word processing package called ‘View’ for the BBC Micro. That knowledge has been far less useful to me than trigonometry.

Education is not just about training young people for work. It is about making their heads interesting places to spend the rest of their lives. So what should the criteria for inclusion in the curriculum be? I propose it is that which has endured. If it’s been around a long time, that’s a good sign it will be relevant and potentially fruitful for some time yet.

Job opportunity of the week

Ballarat Clarendon College - Sturt Street Campus

If you like the idea of explicitly teaching some algebra skills and you are not an ultracrepidarian, you may like the idea of coming to teach maths at Clarendon. If so, it’s worth noting that we are advertising a job right now. We are also advertising for Science and French teachers. You can read about these positions here.

Monkey business of the week

You are put in charge of an underperforming school and you can change one thing and one thing only. What is it?