Is Maths the Most Important Subject?
Rishi Sunak recently announced that he wants everyone to study maths until 18. Many people told me that their inner teenager felt sick. If it can do that to adults who actually don’t have to study maths, what will it do to our children?
Are you expecting me to back his plan? Well, I’m not.
Over the next few blog posts I will write all about why I don’t think this is a good idea, and what we need to do instead. To start, I will consider ‘is maths the most important subject?’
For me, the answer is no!
Yes, maths has an important part to play in the world, and it underpins a lot of what we know, and need. But it is not THE most important. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects have been gaining prominence over the last few years, and I agree that they provide us with a lot of our modern world. However, life is a balance, a rich tapestry, and we need it all. We must appreciate creative subjects, and give them the importance that they deserve.
I’m a mathematician, I’m also a musician. Playing and listening to music is what I turn to when my mental health isn’t good. It brings me joy. It’s an important part of my life. I may not have been an A grade student when it comes to any of the creative subjects, but I’m glad I had the opportunity to do them. My life would be far more boring, and I’d be considerably more miserable without the creative things I do such as music, crochet, and sewing.
I’ve spoken to many people over the last few days, some are colleagues, others friends, whose subjects were the arts, and those are the things that they are gifted at. They don’t understand why we are cutting arts subjects and promoting so heavily the sciences. Are we saying that they are second rate citizens? Does Rishi never go to the theatre, or listen to music?
We are all individuals (which is one of Skills4Parents core values), and we need to understand ourselves, and feel good about who we are. There is a mental health crisis amongst young people, and I believe what is being promoted by our education system is exacerbating it. Valuing people means valuing ALL of them. That means acknowledging that what they are good at has importance, and in turn this will build their self-esteem and self-worth.
Don’t get me wrong, there is a place for learning maths, and to be fluent numerically. Feeling happy doing your tax return, and not getting that dread when you have to work out a sum, is VERY important. I believe that with the right teaching everyone can feel confident with numeracy.
In my next post I’ll be discussing maths anxiety, and how we need to tackle that rather than adding extra maths in, for
‘If you do what you’ve always done you’ll get what you’ve always done’.
Making children do more maths is not the answer.
Before then, I’d like to leave you with a video that I recently saw, which summed it up for me. We need to teach children how to have joy, we need to create space for fun, we need to value what they create and spark their imagination. Enjoy!
LOVE this! Teach children how to experience – and create – joy!