peterwright

peterwright

When David Blunkett was appointed as Minister for Education, he visited China to see how they approached things. He was shocked to find that this socialist country believed very much in what is described by our educationalists as elitism. The more able pupils were creamed off and educated together.

His hosts were unable to understand why he questioned this practice, which they saw as essential if their country was to have the most capable people in the world. Blunkett noted the success of this approach but, on return to the UK never managed to do anything about it in the face of an educationalist establishment which had set its face against selection nearly two decades previously.

I agree with Professor Fan that the anti maths culture in our society is a major impediment to improving maths teaching in our schools. It has become, somehow, socially acceptable to be hopeless at maths, but that is a culture which has grown up in the last 30 years. we should be asking ourselves why?

The fairly radical change in educational culture and practice of the late 60's and 70's was based on an attempt at social engineering which said hat no one may fail. This led to the comprehensive system and virtual abandonment of streaming at all levels.

 This of itself mitigated against learning as a class, because in classs with a wide range of ability each childmust learn at their own rate. Learning by rote is by definition a class wide activity where all the pupils chant out loud the table or alphabet or whatever else it is they are learning.

This in turn took away from our children the basic facility with arithmetic which has bred generations of citizens that have been turned off maths. No wonder that we now have a poor attitude to the subject as a society.

If Mr Gove's laudable attempts to bring back learning by rote are to succeed, we must also bring back streaming.