Kids don't need to learn maths anymore because of AI

[noblegiraffe]

Claims this tit in the Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/20/gcses-young-people-ministers-report-exams-britain-schools

"Just as the chip renders obsolete a need to know how engines work, so computers and soon artificial intelligence have rendered maths obsolete. In both cases, the subject is the pursuit of a tiny minority. It is computers that all pupils should study and learn how to use, rather than be suspended or accused of cheating for doing so. Making them learn maths is like teaching them to swim but banning the use of water."

He then suggests that personal finance should be prioritised as a subject to teach in schools. Good luck teaching that to kids who don't know any maths.

Incidentally, I asked ChatGPT to do some maths questions and it got them wrong. Ask me how I knew.

..and all through history people have told stories and written stories and made plays, and acted in them, on the street or round the town, all to entertain one another.

Maybe kids don't need to learn trigonometry, but if their brains and mine don't get any use with a bit of arithmetic whatever are we going to be like?

Thank God someone said that before I did. That maths still required it seems

Working out random stuff isn't fun to a teenager broken by the age of 9 by our inadequate school system that has no tolerance at all nationally for any minor deviation from learning middle of the road.
So no by the time at child's self esteem is smashed down and they have the opinion they are thick and worthless yes! I agree drop maths.
They just won't need it beyond the basics.. Far better to concentrate on those and get every child to know their tables, addition etc really brilliantly as well as personal finance.

My dh did maths a level and then physics as uni in no way have his skills helped us at all. They are not needed.

Ai is going to radically change education in the next decade.
With u tube and ai etc unfortunately I do think teachers maybe at risk.
So many students use ai and the ai checkers are rubbish.
In some ways it will radicalise education but obviously in other ways we will be churning out students all using one font of information with no skills to actually research and think and put something together.

I was good enough at maths to dothe O level a year early, and get an A in it. (Yes, it was a long time ago and it was an O level, not a GCSE).

I was then compelled by my school to start A level maths and I simply couldn't do it (not helped by the fact that I didn't want to!). (I do have A levels in physics and chemistry plus a few others though!)

Maths is pretty useless for most people in everyday life. HOWEVER what a vast number people need more of is basic ARITHMETIC. The "average jo(sie)" understands very little of basic concepts such as ratios, percentages etc that would help even with everyday tasks. If there was less focus on maths for those who are not so inclined, but a lot more focus on arithmetic and some basic stats for everyone, I think that would stand many people in far better stead.

Absolutely ridiculous. Humans are going to end up incapable of any function other than eating at this rate.

I used chat GPT as a first pass on some research today. I then sense checked it. It took me four hours and most of it was incorrect.

the machines aren’t winning yet (although I can’t deny it was a helpful starting point)

Exactly this.

Education is power. It’s about developing our brain and learning how to process information.

Do you mean the area of a triangle, or the volume of a pyramid?

Maths is extremely important for forming logic and problem solving skills.

DS was programming a game for his degree the other day, he was unimpressed because he was going to have to use trig. He found a way round it in the end but still, there's a lot of maths in comp sci. The idea that maths is obsolete is just silly.

You can find out pretty much anything on the internet, it doesn't mean school is obsolete.

I’ve just marked an assignment in which a student has used AI to help him with the maths. TBF, the maths is fine in itself. Unfortunately it’s inappropriate in the given context, so he has failed. He didn’t know enough to understand that the answers AI came up with were nonsensical.

The secondary education needs to be revamped, we are still teaching the same things we were teaching 40years ago. We are not teaching the skills needed for them to get jobs. Exams that largely rely on just memory are out dated.

Even Einstein said there is no point in remembering phone numbers as there is a directory that has them in.

We do seem to be headed towards Wall-E territory.

Agree. Haven’t read the article but a depressing concept.

Even Einstein said there is no point in remembering phone numbers as there is a directory that has them in.

Maths is not equivalent to strings of digits with limited use. It’s a constantly evolving system of logical, quantitative thinking with almost limitless application in scientific problem solving.

There isn’t a big directory with all the maths you need to solve any problem, and if there was, you’d need to know enough maths to be sure you were using it correctly.

Just asked DS(12) the volume of a triangle. He looked a bit puzzled and said "a 3D triangle?" I told him no, standard triangle. Then he asked if I meant area (while looking at me more and more like I might be stupid). As I insisted on volume he's said 0 since it has no depth and based on it effectively being a triangle based pyramid of 0 height.

Then he asked me if I knew how to represent the interger limit for 32 bits as 2^n and said he'd accept either signed or unsigned. I decided I'd lost the maths questions game and sent him to bed.

I guess there is value for DS learning maths in tormenting me with questions he knows I have no idea about even if he could probably use AI to do his homework.

Hate the mentality that you don’t need to understand things yourself, just to pull the levers to get a machine to it. I say this as someone who did GCSEs in the 90s and spent inordinate amounts of time learning IT ‘stuff’ that was obsolete within years. We now seem to be going through a similar thing, with some thinking bloody prompting is the only skill we need.

Maths, sciences, history, literature and the rest teach vital logical, analytical and other intellectual skills. Learning how to operate the tech du jour is frankly a much easier thing to pick up and shouldn’t be displacing mental exercise.

A silly article from someone in an occupation that is more likely to become obsolete than jobs that use maths. Let’s face it- once AI starts to become more factually accurate, media companies will be able to create content for the price of some software and a lawyer to check the more controversial articles.

I don’t understand the opinion that we should only study stuff that is helpful in life. You can only know if something is interesting if you give it a go and see if it floats your boat. It’s good that different people like different subjects because it leads to a society where there’s people to do the full variety of jobs that a civilised society needs.

What about general knowledge? It doesn’t hurt to know things for the sake of knowing even if you aren’t interested in the subject.

LLMs are terrible at maths, they struggle with even basic arithmetic. Agentic AI gives the illusion of a chatbot that can do maths but really it’s just farming out the maths to WolframAlpha or whatever that has been around for donkeys.

Oh god, just looked at the article, it’s Simon Jenkins. He’s an absolute dunce and seems to be contractually obliged to trot out these anti-STEM articles once a quarter.

That’s not what I meant. For her it was a waste of time, she enjoyed art, she was good at it which is why she took it at GCSE. She just didn’t like the subject at GCSE level and how (for her) it was taught but I think that was more to do with the teacher.

if she had been able to pick her GCSEs at a later age then Art would not have been on the table, she would have picked something else as she would have had a clearer idea of where her interests lay.

Art, drama etc is so important I agree. Dd doesn’t do anything art related now, she’s completely lost interest, doesn’t draw anymore which is a shame because she is or was bloody fantastic at it. But as she told me, GCSE Art destroyed that passion for her

This trope was trotted out when pocket calculators were allowed at school!

And "why should I have to learn anything when I can just google it?"

Given that AI can do pretty much everything, why should anyone do anything anymore?