Math

The number of scientists and engineers being produced by my country is dropping alarmingly. The educators are all running around in a fuss trying to figure out what is wrong. It seems obvious to me; our education system discriminates against people who have poor communication skills. The most obvious give away is the relative achievement of boys against girls.

The changes have been subtle, but enough, to discount reasoning and visualisation abilities while elevating language abilities. So a child that would have bumbled through primary education but excelled at math and science in secondary education are so thoroughly beaten by the time they get there they consider themselves worthless students. Add to this the dumming down of the math and science syllabus by ignoring a fundamental understanding of mathematics and the problem becomes self evident.

I believe the syllabus has reduced these subjects to emphasise process and describing rather than equations and diagrams. There is no emphasis on the proof, the ability to logically present a mathematical argument. The visualisation of the mathematics replaced by the ability to regurgitate.

You see I was one of those students who failed primary education thoroughly. I am not a communicator – at least I wasn’t until I discovered the word processor. But when I got to high school I discovered geometry. It was just so easy for me. We did science, once more the facts of science stuck and resonated with me. I could ‘see’ it. I continued to fail the humanity type subjects but there was a couple of subjects that I could be good at.

And that is the point by the time I did upper school I could choose to do math and science courses with standard English as the only non-option. My math and science note books were filled with equations and diagrams not words. I was doing stuff that I could excel at.

Perhaps some early testing of students could stream out those that have high reasoning ability and protect them from the near useless requirements of learning to spell or times tables or other like tasks. Give them word processors, calculators and special courses on business English; use short sentences with simple words. It would be more efficient and allow these kids to develop their talent and not be dragged down into a quagmire of having to communicate with expressive regurgitation.

I am sure there are enough kids who like to write and talk to fill the needs of society with out interfering with the progress of those that will be needed to invent the new world and keep it running.