maths lessons - what is the point?

[tatt]

I liked maths at school but now I look at my kids books and think why are they learning all this stuff that they will never use (e.g. calculating angles of polygons, heights of flagpoles and so on). Has anyone ever used this stuff?

Why don't they have them e.g. comparing the value for money of different mobile phone contracts?

If pure maths is taught well then it can be fun. People who hate maths should not teach it. Maths needs to be taught by teachers who are enthusasic.

I had a great maths teacher who was completely and utterly mad. Her lessons were very hands on. For example when we learnt Trignometery she tied string to the top of the door and we measured angles and the length of the string.

I am sure it was because of her I did so well. However she would never had been accepted on to teacher training in the 21st century because she only had a pass degree. (She spent her university years socialising too much)

You can use some maths to argue with people using statistics that sound realistic .. "You realise that it would be 40% more expensive to do it the way you are suggesting?" and "Yes, but if you buy tins instead of pouches, you get the some food at 55% of the price"

And that ability to articulate precisely how wrong someone is is worth all those Friday afternoons in Maths 10C!

I thin k my fear of maths is the 1st time I did my GCSEs I failed dimally so the fear is still there this time around and I can't rememeber ever doing half the stuff i am being taught now.

scuse spelling pmsl I am also re taking my english GCSE PMSL

I know what you mean, but I frequently use maths for everyday life. Yesterday - working out angles, lengths, multiplying fractions etc for building rabbit hutch. Last night - volume and capacity of roofboxes on ebay.

there are some nice problems here that if set in maths text books would, I think, make the subject seem a little more interesting. So why is no-one writing better text books? Why don't we demand better maths teaching?

You can stretch a brain in lots of ways. Killer sudokus are great, tower of hanoi, rush hour games, crateman - they all teach logic and problem solving skills and don't bore children silly.

I'm aware of one mad maths teacher at my children school but unfortunately he hasn't taught my children. I wish he had.

What bores one child silly does not bore another. A lot of really bright children enjoy pure maths. The frustration and boredom comes when children can't do the maths.

I believe that governant had plans at one point of having two maths GCSES. One GCSE being pure maths that is mentally challenging and the other GCSE being every day maths. The thick kids would just concentrate on the the basic maths and maybe the bright kids could get the basic maths GCSE out the way early and then concentrate on learning more interesting maths like Calculus.

The country needs a core of a bright people with strong maths skills. However we don't all need to be mathematicans. We do all need to be able to do every day arthemetic though.

Killer sudokus are mathematical and pure maths can be as fun as sudoko. However there are plenty of people who hate sudoko because they can't do them. If you make a mistake in sudoko it can be really frustating finding where you have gone wrong.

While learning should be fun wherever possible, it shouldn't be 'edutainment'

Sometimes you have to get through the duller stuff to get to the 'fun' stuff.

at the moment all of the Physics module I'm teaching is 'linked' into mobile phones. It doesn't make it more interesting, in fact it takes away time that would be better used doing practical work, which the kids tend to find motivational anyway.

The 'links' are so transparantly 'lets make it relevant for the kids' it makes my teeth ache, and leaves the kids feeling patronised

Bright kids get board. Some kids want to do hard maths and hard science.

What is stupid is the idea that no one should fail. If you are going to do proper science or study medicine or dentistry then you need to do difficult and sometimes boring work. There is no royal road to gaining knowledge.

I fail to see how children can engage in scientific issues without a proper grounding in boring facts.

I think that we need more choice at 14 than the national curriculum allows. Prehaps children who hate maths and physics are better off doing something like an apprenticeship in car maintaince or childcare.

oops about spelling "Bored" as "board"

and the very 'best' stuff in science, the most rewarding to understand is often hard.

you are quite right, there is no 'royal road' to the understanding, it is hard won! But the look on their faces when they 'get' it is a wonderful thing.

The harsh reality is that not all of life is fun and easy. And even if you are very bright there will be things that you will find hard.

The saddest thing that I find is that many children simply want to be 'told the answer', a product of being tested to boredom in their academic lives. They don't want to work something out, they want me to give them the answer.

Geometry is wonderful. Elegant and satisfying. Comparing mobile phone tarrifs is dreary, like having lessons in doing laundry. Of course life skills are part of education but they're not everything.

DD1 gets so cross with her classmates who aske her to tell them the answer - she insists on showing them how to work it out for themselves, much to their disgust . Mind you, she also had a go at her physics teacher because she doesn't see why she has to answer the questions in exactly the way the answer sheet says when her answer is (probably) just as valid (and possibly more accurate, having seen soem of the questions and "official" answers ).

You do have to be careful in answering questions at GCSE as the examiners expect a particular use of words. No key word, no mark (often).

It seems as if we are being overly pedantic, but sadly sometimes out hands are tied

mmm, her physics teacher told her that the problem was, that the questions were too easy for her, and she needed to stop making it more complicated for herself. "Stop thinking about it, and put down the obvious answer" he said, which is a pretty sad thing for a teacher to have to say to a pupil really. Wish we had been moving to Australia, then she could have been home edded, and missed out GCSEs totally .

One of the problems that I have with very able children studying some topics is that they can, on times, 'over think' the topic, to their detriment.

A good example of this is the Action potential in Biology. Bright children often find this harder to grasp than less able ones

This time I taught it I told the class that they were to take what I told them on trust until we got to the end, then they could ask questions. This stopped them running ahead too fast and confusing themselves. It wasn't that I didn't want them to think, I wanted them to see the whole picture first.

well the kids are getting good grades in maths so the boredom doesn't come from not being able to do it. Boredom is not invariably because you find it too hard.

One of them is probably going to need to do maths beyond GCSE (unless their ideas about a future career change) but is not going to have any enthusiasm for doing so. No idea what the other one is going to want to do.

Whatever is wrong with learning for learnings sake?

Knowledge is power and all that stuff!

I love maths and numbers and find using them almost poetic at times. What feeling in the world could be better than the feeling you get when a complex maths proof is solved?

Suduko, which is a major source of entertainment these days, is proof that for many maths can be entertaining and fun!

So, tatt do you think your kids are bored with Maths because it has been dumbed down to oblivian? If there were tougher questions would your kids find it more interesting.

I think its a myth that easy=interesting.