Maths ... AIBU?

[eatsleepread]

I was chatting with a colleague the other day; we have daughters in secondary school, and both are struggling with Maths. I am currently looking for a tutor for my daughter.
I simply cannot understand the 'one size fits all' approach to the teaching of this subject, and believe that it requires an overhaul. Why - when she does perfectly well in her other subjects - would my daughter need to learn about the equation of a line, trigonometry, algebra? What good is going to come of this in her everyday future life?
Rather, why can't she be taught mathematics related life skills? Lessons that revolve around addition, subtraction, percentages, bank statements, interest ... and all other useful elements of the subject.
Leave the serious study of maths to those who are gifted or even interested in it. And let the others ditch it in favour of the practical basics, where they might actually achieve something.
Why are they all still being taught the same things? And why are so many young people particularly girls still failing at this subject?
AIBU?

@StripeyDeckchair

Why do people think schools should be teaching things such as how to read bank statements?

When you have children you have a responsibility to teach them basic life skills. Its part of your job ad their parent, society is all too quick to allocate responsibility for these things to schools.

There are only 25 hours of teaching time in a week. That's 950 a year.
Schools need to focus on the academic subjects and parents need to step up & patent.

Yes - besides, reading bank statements doesn’t need any maths skills.

It does not take time to teach kids how to read a bank statement why wouldn't a parent explain why a credit card with 5% interest is better than one with 20% interest? It's hardly rocket science and takes no time at all? A primary school student could understand that

Compound and simple interest is on the maths curriculum already btw.

It does take some time to show someone how to interpret a bank statement. We actually do cover this on the Y7 curriculum. The number of students who have clearly never discussed any sort of finance issues with parents is very high. Parents need to accept some responsibility!

Many Business Studies courses cover "life stuff" like what is the difference between a direct debit and standing order or profit=revenue-cost which can be extrapolated to savings=income-costs for a household. It's not particularly mathematical.

@HercwasanEnemyofEducation

It does take some time to show someone how to interpret a bank statement. We actually do cover this on the Y7 curriculum. The number of students who have clearly never discussed any sort of finance issues with parents is very high. Parents need to accept some responsibility!

The only question my kids asked me about their bank statement was why the percentage interest was so low and were they being scammed by the rate set by their bank.

Sounds like your kids are pretty switched on. There's plenty who can't understand them.

I failed most of my subjects at school. I dropped out of school as soon as I could. However, years later as an adult I went to college to get maths, computing and physics a level equivalents. I passed easily and applied for STEM university courses.
I hated school, that’s why I didn’t do well. I don’t think people should judge which 11 years old should give up maths or not.

I used to think exactly the same about algebra, equations and log tables etc when I was learning it, and never dreamed that I'd end up needing any of it in real life.

About 7 or 8 years after I'd left school, I ended up working in the contracts department of a large organisation, which involved using algebra and indices to calculate the value of staged-payment invoices for long-term contracts in a multitude of foreign currencies. This was in the days before computers on every desk, so it had to be done using a calculator and a brain.

YABU

So at 11 kids should be funnelled into two groups according to you.

Good at Maths and teach academics- so they have multiple doors opened to them and the sky is the limit.
And the scrapheap. Who are taught basic addition, and are expected to end up in manual labour I assume?

Unfortunately to get into any scientific sector/ engineering, even Teaching you need a sound knowledge of Maths
You're narrowing the choices available to your child at such a young age. Before they've even shown you if they are or not capable of it.

What makes you think girls are bad at maths?

They outperform boys in GCSE maths every year.

Maybe maths should be taught with bank statements and interest etc because kids might find it more interesting? Should I buy the new iPhone/galaxy outright and get pay as you go or pay a higher monthly fee for for it? Maybe it depends (eg on how often you change your phone - at what cut over point is 1 strategy better than the other)? Student loan repayment calculations might be interesting (though maybe quite confusing - to me at least!)

Some people are more motivated by the context of what they are learning. Wouldn’t it also give greater confidence and hope for people to have an exam on a smaller amount of material, but which most people can succeed at if given enough time and practice. Those that don’t pass, can have more training and do it again next year, rather than having to move on to more topics before mastering basic arithmetic.

Give over with the "teach it through real life examples and it'll be interesting". No one expects to recreate the battle of Hastings when they learn about it.

I'm all for throwing in a shop sale or mortgage calculation when appropriate. But it would be ridiculous to expect to do this for every maths topics on the curriculum.

As a private tutor I see this a lot (I am a foot health practitioner too, I trained as a teacher first and still love doing it)
I deliberately make math relatable to my students, so they learn what they need for exams and how to do the formulae but then we really focus on the real world applications of the problems, to make it easier to remember come exam time. So for instance when I was teaching a student for her GCSEs last year, she really struggled with speed=distance/time, so rather than just teach her the formula, we calculated how fast her horse could run, we worked out how quickly she could drive to her parents holiday home, how far we would have to walk to walk off a doughnut (and ate them afterwards) etc. I hate the one size fits all idea, and I cannot stand that some teachers just can’t be bothered to change their teaching styles and methods to appeal to every child.

I cannot stand that some teachers just can’t be bothered to change their teaching styles and methods to appeal to every child.
This is rude.

I'm not planning 30 different methods, that's a bonkers expectation.

Why - when she does perfectly well in her other subjects - would my daughter need to learn about the equation of a line, trigonometry, algebra? What good is going to come of this in her everyday future life?

I think the whole point of a broad education at that age is because nobody actually knows what will benefit them in the future. So they do a bit of it all, before choosing which subjects to 'specialise' in.

That’s not to say that kids should be prevented from studying the more academic aspects if they want to (and some mathematicians aren’t particularly good at quick arithmetic). But why force people to do something they are not interested in, decreases their confidence, where they get frustrated if they can’t keep up with all the new material? I’ve worked in stem jobs and most of the maths I use is basic arithmetic (percentages, fractions, conversion of units) and simple algebra (rearranging equations).

Maths (not math) is a lot about confidence. Kids can get into a mental block where they think they can't do it. GCSE maths is not that hard - it's a good discipline, maths skills are very useful for everyday life. Bank statements - that's for parents to teach.

@MaskingForIt

God I hate this “maths is hard” narrative. No-one is proud of not being able to read, but this “girls find maths hard” attitude is depressing and pervasive.

No wonder she’s failing with an attitude like the OP’s as a role model.

This has angered me for years, parent's laughing, 'oh he takes after me, I couldn't do Maths either' and yet getting hysterical if their child is not on the highest reading level. I did once flip and asked a mother 'Do you find all your child's learning problems funny?' she wasn't pleased.

@Namenic sounds around the level needed to pass GCSE maths with a grade 4.

@Namenic

That’s not to say that kids should be prevented from studying the more academic aspects if they want to (and some mathematicians aren’t particularly good at quick arithmetic). But why force people to do something they are not interested in, decreases their confidence, where they get frustrated if they can’t keep up with all the new material? I’ve worked in stem jobs and most of the maths I use is basic arithmetic (percentages, fractions, conversion of units) and simple algebra (rearranging equations).

If you take your argument to its logical conclusion, they should not be forced to learn anything that doesn't interest them, many would learn nothing! We need to lose this idea that school is another form of entertainment, it needs some effort and can be hard.

I was a girl who found maths hard. I'm now a woman who finds maths hard. That said, where I went to school, we were all taught maths at different levels depending on which exam paper we were going to sit. So we had classes build of people who were doing the basic paper, classes of those doing the middle difficulty paper and classes of those doing the most difficult paper, so we didn't ever get a "one size fits all" approach to it.

We also had "admin" as a subject, which taught us about things like interest/bank statements/taxes - we could choose to sit this as a subject as an exam, or we could do it as an extra non graded subject if we wanted to.

Stereotype threat is where people perform more poorly if they constantly get the message that a grouping they identify with (such as girls) don't do so well at whatever the task in hand is. We do absorb the messages we hear, especially if they're repeated, even jokey ones.

We nearly all use algebra every day, even if we don't realise it. If you go into a shop and bought 5 Wispas at 60p each, and worked out that you were about to spend £3, that was algebra. Of course, you can just go to the till and use your card or phone to pay without doing that, but there have been times in my life where I've had to budget pretty carefully, so would have to work out whether I could afford 3 Wispas or just 2 before I went to pay (though if things were that tight, it would be no Wispas anyway. I don't know why I am obsessing about Wispas.)

f you go into a shop and bought 5 Wispas at 60p each, and worked out that you were about to spend £3, that was algebra.

How is that algebra? What's the formula? Surely that's a simple multiplication?

x=60p
5x=£3

@EBearhug

x=60p 5x=£3

You don't need x though.

You know you are buying 5 things costing 60p each. Why are we adding in an x to make an equation we don't need?