Not knowing maths is not a badge of honour, is it?

[Fidoandacupoftea]

Over the years, some of my DDs classmates mums have mentioned that maths is beyond them, in a sort of 'boasting' manner, and the kids always get help from dads. I am not talking about dyspraxia or expect anyone to feel embarrassed about it. But surely it shouldn't be something to be proud of (not the right word I know), if we want to set examples for our DDs

I have used algebra lots in everyday life. I used Pythagoras only a week or so to calculate the diagonal of a gymnastics floor to see the longest length a tumbling pass could be

My children have studied Maths to A level and there is a big jump from GCSE to A level, even for those students who achieved A or A*.
My husband is the mathematician in our house and I freely admit I found Maths at school difficult and boring.
My parents didn't encourage me at all and in fact, my mother regularly stated that people who were good at maths tended to be rather two dimensional and you certainly wouldn't want to sit next to a mathematician, accountant or maths teacher at a dinner party!
How's that for stereotyping?!
I dropped Maths after O Level.
Apart from the obvious application of arithmetic in 'real life', I really struggled to see the relevance of it.
This is not intended to bash Maths teachers, but I'm sure we can all remember the inspirational teacher at school who brought a subject to life.
Sadly I never had one of those for maths!
Interestingly, at my children's school, I've noticed an attitude of near worship at the altar of Maths, Further Maths and Physics and I'm actually concerned about the lack of prestige of MFL and the Humanities these days.

I worked with the Coastguard - knowledge and ability in maths was a daily given.

Bearings, algebra, trigonometry, time calculations - that was for the work side of things -

then on a slow night shift, mental arithmetic to be able to score cribbage!

Unfortunately this is the ' it is feminine to be thick' attitude that should have gone in the 1950s

Yes!

I was 'good' at maths with hard work and revision I got an A at GCSE and an A at A Level. My 'understanding' ran out about the end of P3 thought and I really struggled with some of the later concepts.

I was lucky in that I always had good teachers and my parents encouraged Maths etc. My mum was better at humanities (was a humanities teacher) but she still helped me with maths and science homework because Dad was so shit at helping he would have me in tears! Unfortunately I have inherited my dads lack of teaching skills!

Oh, but I am terrible at mental arithmetic and times tables though... much better at grasping concepts and applying them.

I make myself practice mental arithmetic quite a bit in day to day life e.g. bill splitting, percentages in my head before using my phone to check.

I'm sure there was a thread once asking for examples of jobs where different areas of maths are used. There were lots, a few of which have been mentioned here, particularly the building trades with lots of regulations. You just need to look at a roof to see why Pythagoras is useful.

My opinion is that different people 'prefer' different variations of questions. Ask me to solve equations, calculate lengths and angles from diagrams - great. But 'wordy' maths questions I struggle a bit more with. I prefer the more abstract stuff whereas DH is the opposite, and can apply maths much easier when there's some sort of meaning to it.

I also believe that maths builds on top of itself, and if you don't fully understand something early on, it makes things much harder later on when you have to use that 'something' in something else mathematical eg. fractions.

I’m not great at maths. I didn’t get much encouragement with education, my secondary school was in special measures and my attitude as a school girl stank.

I’m not ashamed though. I’m always working on myself and will be firmly encouraging all my children to work as hard as they can in school as well as instil the importance of maths in them.

My sons in junior school and in the extension set for maths, he doesn’t struggle at all. He just gets it!

@mishfish- how many girls are in your son’s maths extension class?

Maisypops the pics sums it all. So many great examples of how integral maths is in our everyday life. I have spoken to so many women who have no idea what their mortgage payments are or how much is their pension contribution.

Not only is mathematics used in everyday life, the manipulation of mathematics is rife in the media for political purposes and is responsible for a range of different problems.
The best example is exaggerating or downplaying of risk. Vaccine reactions, immigrants, crime statistics, climate change, threat of terrorism, gun violence in America etc etc. With every debate on these topics people chuck out dodgy statistics to back up their arguments. You see it on MN too. Politicians and media with a political agenda bank on the fact that their target audience won't, or won't be able to analyse the statistics in their statement they make and will take it at face value.

www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/britons-impressed-by-big-percentages-2014072989011

I've never known anyone refer to maths as a male thing.
I'm rubbish at maths, always have been always will be. Its got nothing to do with the fact that I'm female.

YANBU

Though my Dad sat and did maths with me and I went on to A-level maths so I think that less an issue. Mum did rest only thing they were negative bout were foreign languages and none of us did well with them possibly as a result.

It's not just parents with the gendered ideas about maths.

It was very frustrating when a primary math teacher told DD1 who was good at maths that it was hard and later a boy’s subject. She started not doing as well .

I have two at primary currently both good at ICt and maths – it’s all the praise my DS with and it’s mentioned in passing with DD2. When we ask DS doing well with English and literacy and other stuff but the focus back on the maths and ICT boy subjects very quickly.

The Math brains a prevalent idea is also very frustrating. The oh they have maths brains or with DS at younger age he doesn’t have a maths brain. (They both struggled massively with reading but we never got told they didn't have a reading brain) .What they have is parents so concerned about maths teaching at primary they went out and found an on-line paid for service that taught the DC maths and gave them 20 minutes practise a day for years. Took a long time to get DD1 and DS past idea maths was hard .

That doesn’t stop at secondary – DD1 top set – was without a qualified maths teacher in yr 7 for half a year then they rushed through the syllabus – as they all had maths brains so should have coped – well DD1 did well with everything covered at home previous but stuff that was new or left to primary graphs and some statistics – she struggled with. The only offered solution was we find ourselves maths resources and do some extra work with her..

My Mil is one of these women who pretends to be thick – but I’m always surprised when FIL claims not to have used maths at all in his life beyond adding and subtracting and not understand why our kids need to understand it – he’s a builder and ran his own company for a while .

PP suggested there is a similar attitude to spelling and I agree. It’s not helpful when my kids need to work at it to have people come out with this – especially when IME people can be very nasty about actual poor spelling and it will be looked at in their exams.

That's a huge essay but show how much I agree.

@reallyanotherone I’ve no idea. He can’t answer either, he’s good at maths but general observation is clearly lacking 🙄

I have to say I do have some sympathy with parents trying to help Year 2s and 3s with maths homework - but that's because the way they're taught now is so different to what we (DH and I!) learned. If we try to teach them the way we were taught we confuse them. For example, I was taught to add multi--digit numbers by placing one on top of the other and adding up the columns. My DD was taught to place them side by side and perform some twists on them I never understood. I was never able to help her because she couldn't explain to me what she was meant to do. (It's funny, though, because now she is in Year 6, when I see her add and subtract she does it just like I always did.)

At the risk of being flamed for adding to teachers' burdens, it might actually alleviate them somewhat if they were to give parents some kind of guide/quick seminar about how they teach primary maths. With parents better able to reinforce the day's learning by using the same methods the teacher uses, the teacher can spend less time in lessons going over the same material again and again.

Although this has nothing to do really with the gender divide in maths (as I said, my DH learned roughly the same way I did so he's no help either), the frustration at being unable to help at such an early age, combined with a general lack of confidence in maths, may ingrain attitudes that maths is "too hard".

Strongly recommend the book “Maths for Mums and Dad’s” to help anyone who not only struggles with Maths themselves but also doesn’t get the newfangled way of doing lots of the things we struggled with as kids.

“Dads” not “Dad’s”. I may be poor at Maths but I am a sad grammar and punctuation bitch. Oh, the irony

I failed GCSE maths twice (D) although the 2nd time I really didn't put any effort in. I'm hoping 3rd time's a charm as I'll be sitting it again next year. I'd never been confident with maths which frustrated my parents as they were both very able as was my older brother.

I have sons. I have told my older 2 I didn't pass but I've also told them how it restricted my career choices long after leaving school. I also hope retaking it will show how much it still bothers me aged 40!