Teach Roman Numerals in Primary Maths: Gove

[noblegiraffe]

A story in The Guardian today has a charity expressing concerns about Michael Gove's plans for a new numeracy curriculum in primary school.

Among other things, the classically educated minister with a Latin obsession has decided that primary school children really need to be able to read Roman numerals up to 1000.

Baffling. I can't say it gives me any confidence about the quality of the rest of it.

I have to say - that the arithmetic pages I linked to would scare most not very able mathemeticians witless. (hmm is that a split infinitive ?!). But if you are not going to do any more than learn the symbols, and not use them mathematically it won't cause a problem. Should fit in well with the NC anyway - most GCSE level science and geography seems to be about learning the names of things, rather than having any underlying understanding of them.

Maybe we should send Mr Gove some roman numeral arithmetic ?

I think they do understand, onelittle - I'm not a classicist but I read up on what Romans do and they can do more complex maths than we might think, although it's all very clumsy.

I'm sure they must've understood the concept of a system of symbols being only representations, because well-educated romans read Greek, and the Greeks sure knew that.

media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/d/draft%20national%20curriculum%20for%20mathematics%20key%20stages%201%202.pdf

The draft curriculum has already been published

That doesn't look too bad - thanks mrz - the only sticky bit is getting children to memorise and recognize numerals up to 1000 (which seems like overkill). The rest looks sensible as it's using the comparison to numerals to teach place value.

Very interesting!

When you think about it all you need to learn is
I=1
V=5
X=10
L=50
C=100
D=500
M=1000

No, you need to know how they fit together, too.

I still think it is a lot to learn, and I don't see the value of rote learning it.

I think knowing how they fit together can help reinforce the relationship between numbers

Mrz - every time I see your username I am whisked back to my A level English lessons, where Mr Z, our most adored teacher, would read Tennyson in his rich sonorous tones

It's not you is it?

I think that's certainly true.

But rote learning them up to 1000 is an awful lot - they have a lot of mirror-imaging built into the pattern. There's no especially good reason why a symbol in front (or left) means 'take away' and one behind (or right) means add on, and I can see that being confusing.

I still get ix and xi mixed up, let alone what you do with the higher numbers, so maybe I'm projecting, but I think they should have stopped at learning up to maybe 20, and had children have a look at the other numbers, but not necessarily have to learn them all by rote.

D'you know, I'm really stupid, I have only just cottoned on that you're Mr Z. I'm so sorry. I've been reading that as 'mrs' for the last however long I've been posting on MN!

mrz neither is

pi/6 = 30
pi/2 = 90
2pi = 360

difficult. In fact I thought it's all rather simple. But I remember so many struggle with radians at school.

I think it might be 'mrs', but with a 'z' instead of an 's'? I only see Mr Z because of my youth!

onelittle, I know you're not talking to me but what on earth is your post about?

Not a big deal, and not a bad idea.

Am going to show off now, or maybe not, as I did not think it was that special. But last week DS (7) who loves maths, and loves Asterix, spent a few hours figuring out counting in Roman numbers. It did not take him long, it is not that hard.

So not a big deal. He liked the fact it was logical and a system, even though different from our normal numbers.

I think it helps children finding patterns and logic, and ultimately challenges their brain, which is a good thing, no? They are hardly going to spend days and days on it!

LRDtheFeministDragon a couple of years ago one of my Y2 pupils (HFA) went through a phase where he converted all his maths work into Roman numerals it took me ages to mark it much longer than for him to actually do the work.

Wow!

That's quite sweet, though, isn't it, that he was interested enough to do that.

LRD, I guess I'm skipping ahead a few steps!

On paper, just rote learning the roman numeral symbols is useless, and it's not mathematics.

In calculus, and iirc all the maths I've done in engineering, we measure angles in radians. Because that's how we do it in STEM. The common degrees we are used to are just not natural. On paper, someone like Gove might think lets force them to learn 2*pi = 360 degree, pi = 180 so on so forth. But it's pointless in a mathematical point of view, as learning that M = 1000.

Sorry JodieHarsh I'm not Mr Z (I'm female but not Mrs Z either) my user name is a bit of a typo when I joined MN I'm afraid.

One day, I shall find him and tell him what his teaching did for us all!

Ohhh ... thanks onelittle. I didn't know if it was p and i or pi as in the Greek letter and was wondering how on earth 2 lots of 3.14 could be 360.

I am not a maths person!

but pi is Greek not Roman isn't it OLTT

As regards pi, I think what children really need to get under their belts is nicely summed up here.

That makes my eyes go funny.

It also makes me hungry.

Something that surprises me (and I don't tutor maths, so this just comes up chatting to children who aren't usually struggling with maths at all), is that a fair few secondary school children couldn't estimate what pi is. They know it's magic button on the calculator, but they don't know it's roughly 3.

LRD two lots of pi = 360 because 2pir = the circumference of a circle. It all slots together if you know the theory behind it.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radian

I think I'm skipping ahead again. 2pir = circumference of circle. So whatever the size of your circle (ie the radius r), 2*pi will be a complete turn (ie 360 degrees).