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Maths?

TheCatWoman

Are we Brits genetically bad at maths, poorly taught or what? It seems so many of us ND and NT really struggle with it and have done for years, so much so that it almost seems to be a point of national pride that we're collectively so bad at it.

All I know is that I'm terrible at it and couldn't pass a GCSE grade 3, even with special tutoring, it meant I failed my access course, luckily it didn't stop me going to uni because I didn't need maths for history. What makes it even worse is I seem unable to use a calculator either, I can put the same numbers in 3 times and get 3 different answers.

Parents

  • I think that maths, like foreign languages, is taught by and for people who have natural abilities in the subject. For me, maths was taught badly. I have zero interest in maths as maths, I get no satisfaction from solving maths problems per se. I do not find either numbers or equations beautiful. Maths was presented to me as, "there is a thing called simultaneous equations and this is it, this is how you apply it". Then we would spend an age doing simultaneous equation problems. It was tedious, dreary and meaningless.

    I really need to know 'why'. Why are simultaneous equations useful, why were they developed. Also, what real world problems do simultaneous equations help to solve? I really needed these explanations to make maths accessible to me and I never really received it. 

  • in reply to Martin

    What you needed was better teaching.

    What they should have done is started with practical problems.  Then showed how these problems can explained as a set of equations.  Finally explain how to solve the equations.

Reply Children
  • in reply to Robert124

    Indeed I needed better teaching, teaching that recognised that I was never going to have any interest in maths as such and needed the practical, real-world, aspects of each facet of maths explained to me, so that I understood its importance and usefulness. To me school maths was just an arcane ritual that held no intrinsic interest.

  • in reply to Robert124

    Golly people are using terms that my only acquaintance with is one of those questions on university challege where I don't understand the individual words let alone what they mean!

    I agree that so many of us have been blighted by terms like 'could do better', constructive criticism is so much more helpful, it gives  jumping off point rather than leaving you feeling deflated and squashed.