Perhaps what are students doing is Economics, Law and accountancy and earning much more money!

Do people seriously not get that the world has changed? Kids are dropping out of school in their droves - most of them bored shitless. We can no longer get away with justifying forced choice of maths and science on national security and vague economic terms. There is a glut of unemployed physics and mathematics PhD's around the world. We've got more than we can use!! Maths and science do not offer "real choice". Actually being able to choose offers real choice.

Hysteria about maths is seems to be little more than "I did maths, and so should you". Community and family studies deal with topics far more important to actual competent humans than does maths.

But who here is advocating for more maths and physics PhDs? I'd wager there is a glut of English Literature PhDs too, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't teach school kids to read.

I'd happily wager that the VAST majority of adults would fail a Year 8 Maths test. We don't use anything in ordinary life beyond the skills acquired in primary school. So why on earth would we want to make school even more tedious by forcing students to waste years suffering through crap they and the majority of their peers will never personally use?

You may well be right. Many adults are functionally innumerate and don't understand basic things like how interest rates work. And suffer the consequences when loan sharks come along.

Are you saying this is a good thing?

Ead, I do not know what area of work that you do, or whether you went on to do higher study, but you will be surprised how many areas of study require a good grounding in maths, statistics and the sciences. It may not mean that you become a mathematician, or a scientist, but still many course/degrees require a certain minimum level of maths and especially statistics for which you need a certain minimum level of maths.

You may be able to do an arts degree without a high level of maths or the sciences, but these days an arts degree is generally only a lead in to other degrees. That is not to say that do not have value because they do, but the maths and the sciences are core to our knowledge streams and higher level jobs. As I said previously they provide you choice and as they say young people are likely to change their careers several times in their working life. And the other benefited to the maths and sciences is that they expand your analytical skills which add to your options.

But above all of that I think they are important because they give you a better understanding of the world you live and work in. They give you a better understanding of many of the issues that affect us today and into the future.

But not a better understanding of reality perhaps! If you agree with me that the vast majority of adults would fail a Year 8 maths test, then there simply can't be that many areas that require a good grounding in maths - and the vast majority of this vast majority DID do maths. As for your strange notions of the values of degrees and the options they open for you, recall that Jobs was a college drop out - a phenomenon very common amongst successful entrepreneurs. Only a tiny fraction of the populace require calculus, yet that is the pinnacle of secondary school maths education, towards which all the other bumph is aimed and justified.

Ead, the vast majority of adults would fail a Year 8 maths test, and that is supposed to be a good thing? As for college drop outs being successful entrepreneurs, what type of entrepreneur are you talking about. I can think of a number of those entrepreneurs who where pretty knowledgeable in the maths and sciences in the first place and probably done a year or more of University before they dropped out. Some of them dropped out because their lecturers/tutors had nothing to teach them in the area they were interested in. In those cases they were ahead of the Universities, but that is a whole different debate.

Another question, Ead, what percentage of the total population are entrepreneurs in the first place, and who do you think they rely on to develop their products/inventions, produce and market them in the first place? Even if they do not have all these knowledge skills they rely on people who do. You seem to have little understanding of the knowledge skills etc. that enables the world as we now know it. It is built on a wide range of knowledge based skills that is built on the back the maths and sciences.

As for only a tiny fraction of the populous requiring calculus, or the sciences. All of our jobs rely on them. The job market and the skill sets required are changing at a great rate of knots and if the younger generations do not have at least a certain minimum level of these knowledge skills they have their options severely reduced. We are not the world of 50 or 100 years ago. The good quality well paying jobs rely on vastly different knowledge skills. And if Australia wants to remain in the First World Nations with a high living standard we have to compete on that higher knowledge skills level.

And if we think we can simply rely on living off the back of the mining or agricultural industries, think again. Those jobs also are built and will continue to be built on the back of the higher knowledge skills of the maths and the sciences. What are we going to do then? Oh, I suppose we could simply keep using more and more foreign workers with those skills instead of Australians, because we have not bothered to teach them those knowledge skills in the first place.

And that include girls. Girls can become engineers, scientists and technologists, but of course that requires the maths and sciences. We are slowly having more girls entering these professions, but they are still a minority. There is not reason why girls/women can not make up 50% of those working in these professions, but of course they need to study the maths and sciences. And for that they need to see these professions as a real option.

We as parent and or educators need to broaden children’s horizons instead of limiting them according to our own limitations. We may not have a good understanding of the maths and sciences ourselves, but we should not use our own limitations and dislikes to limit their options. Instead it is crucial to understand why the maths and sciences are so important to improving their choices in life. That will require good teachers in these areas, but it also requires parents and teachers to not pass their own limitations onto their children or students.

I'm obviously not communicating myself clearly enough. First, I am not saying that it is either good or bad that most adults would fail a Year 8 test. I'm saying that's the reality, and that they virtually all have been exposed to compulsory maths at school. So compulsory maths at school is not the solution you are looking for since compulsory maths has not produced the understanding you think is necessary. I do make the further point that the understanding you are looking for is neither necessary nor desirable, but that is quite separate to the first point.

You make two more serious points - i) people need a minimum level of knowledge (let's not get into whether that is for their own good, for our national pride, or to keep out foreigners), and ii) how to encourage more girls into engineering.

i) I agree. This is what school is for (in some part at least). However I am arguing that the maths you learn in primary school is the minimum level required for a successful and productive adult life. It is quite a separate matter about whether we use maths as a selection device to restrict entry into university - but I will note that the only reason so many students studied senior secondary maths was because it was used to select in this way. That is why we have seen such a drop in those doing maths since the filtering aspect has been reduced/removed. I believe that there are still many students choosing maths in senior secondary AGAINST their own interests out of a superstition that they will somehow need it in the future.

ii) I am all for an increased number of women in science etc., but forcing them to maths is almost a guaranteed way to DIScourage them. That may be why there are so few women in the first place.

As for your claims about the modern world relying on calculus etc., I agree, but that doesn't mean everyone has to be proficient in higher order maths and science to benefit from them. I do not have to be a mechanic to drive a car, nor do I have to be a maths PhD to use a computer. No doubt you don't have to be a quantum theorist to perform the tasks you do at work - even though everything is (supposedly) based on quantum physics.

You seem to imply that I am arguing for a limitation of my children's horizons, when in fact I am arguing for their horizons to be expanded. I don't want my kids to be forced to become any more proficient at maths than will be useful to them, just as I don't want them to be proficient in Latin beyond what will be useful to them. Once they've reached a level of maturity, I certainly don't want them being bored shitless by what other people think they should be good at if it holds no interest for them and crowds out opportunities to develop other skills that ARE of interest to them. You think that I am trying to impose my view of maths on others, when in fact it is quite the reverse.

Ead, primary school maths being good enough for most people to have a successful and productive adult life! What sort of life is that? On the basic wage, if they can get a job in the first place. I am talking about career options for those children at school who will be working in a very different world to the one now let alone the one I started in. This is not the beginning of the 19th century. We are into the 21st century.

My father left school with only primary school maths back in the early 1930's. He had a successful working life although it started as quite a hard life in the middle of the depression. He even became a successful farmer after the Second World War, but that was part ingenuity, part that he was a man who learnt on the job by observing how others did thing and part because he married my mother. My mother had high-school maths, three years of book keeping night school as well as the maths she learnt when she served in the Air Force in the meteorology section. And she had the choice of doing the last because of the level of maths knowledge that she had when she joined up.

That is what I am saying about choice. It is the choice that maths and the sciences provide in career options and job options. I am sorry to tell you this, primary level maths don't provide you much choice. And when I went looking for an apprenticeship in the 1960's after finishing the trade based course subjects that only took me to year 10 at high school, it didn't leave me much choice.

As I said in an earlier post that when I went looking for an apprenticeship the employers wanted Year 12 with maths B at least, not the year 10 Maths A that I had from doing a course that the school Councillor put me in. I was just lucky that my parents had contacts that I eventually secured an apprenticeship for me. And as I also said it was for this lack of choice that it was many years before I went back to do my Tertiary Prep and go onto to do a University degree. Primary school maths is good enough. I do not think so.

I agree with part of what you're saying Marion, except that maths simply ISN'T relevant to the humanities. There are certainly some aspects of maths that it would be desirable for any competent adult to understand - financial literacy, statistical literacy etc. - but the bulk of secondary school maths is taken up with nonsense such as simultaneous equations, quadratics, and eventually calculus. The big problem is that maths has turned into Latin and should be dumped for the same reasons. Maybe then something useful would arise from its ashes.

Hi Marion,

I think part of the problem is the 'real' value society places on maths and science - knowledge in these areas is not seen as being part of being a well educated person. I saw this in action when I studied engineering; I, along with all my fellow engineering students, were obliged to study a humanities subject at university to ensure that we had a more rounded education while students who studied humanities/arts/business/law etc were not under a similar obligation to study a science/maths subject to round out their degrees. I also saw this in action at school, where I had to study English through to year 12, even though I knew that I would never have to write about Shakespeare or poetry as an engineer either. At the time I thought it was terribly unfair that I had to put so much effort into something that was not obviously linked to my chosen studies.

I did end up really enjoying the humanities subjects I have studied at university and I have learnt to appreciate Shakespeare even though I truly detested it as an adolescent. The humanities have also proved to be very useful in that I have a better understanding of cultural issues, history and languages, which has been invaluable when moving to and living in other countries for work. I now consider my small, but growing knowledge in the humanities, part of being an educated person and am thankful that it was forced upon me when I was too immature and uneducated to know this.

However, I often find that people who are from fields such as business, humanities, arts etc have an appalling lack of understanding of maths and science issues. They don't see the uncertainties or magnify the uncertainties out of all proportion, don't understand statistics and probability, and don't have enough basic knowledge of science to make valid statements or even ask sensible questions. Just look at todays article about risk perception to see what I mean (https://theconversation.edu.au/danger-youre-at-serious-risk-of-no-sorry-its-all-relative-12218) and think about all the junk science that gets spouted by some when the issues of vaccination, GM foods, climate science etc gets raised. Poor general understanding of science and maths costs society dearly!

I believe that we should stop regarding maths and science knowledge as being the preserve of the geeks and nerds, and see that basic knowledge and understanding of these subjects as part of being cultured and educated. We should remove the choice of not doing some maths and science at school and university. I'm sure that there will be many graduates like myself, who eventually are thankful that they didn't have the choice to drop science and maths when they were too immature and uneducated to know what they need in the future.

I forgot to add that I also often see scientists and engineers who have no understanding of the complexities of society and people as they have had no exposure in their studies to these areas. They're kinda like the proverbial 'bull in the china shop' when it comes to dealing with people from different cultures and backgrounds. They feel that the explicit nature of science/maths will conquer all, even when there are many very embarrassing white elephants constructed and implemented around the world to show that this is simply not true.

Ead, maths isn't relevant to the humanities? It was very relevant when I did a number of humanities courses. For a start it is highly relevant to statistics and statistics is highly relevant to research within the humanities. And Ead, even though the humanities are very important within higher education, within our society, it is only one area of study or job opportunity. And as we very well know many people will over their lifetime change their area of work, or those areas of work will themselves change requiring a much broader knowledge bases.

I'm all for breadth of knowledge. I'm saying that the level of maths being called for here is ridiculously narrow. There are important elements of mathematics that I think most adults should have a good grip on, but most of these are already (or should be) covered in primary school. Secondary school is already choked with an over emphasis on specialised mathematics rather than providing a truly diverse range of knowledge for students to select from.

Hi Ead,

I'm sure everyone else is as curious as I am - what work do you do where you feel that primary school maths is sufficient? Which careers do you know of that do not call for a higher level of maths than year 8? I'm really curious and I really want to understand your argument.

With my background in engineering its obvious that I have used all of the maths that was taught at school and then some, but I note that all the other commentators from diverse backgrounds in humanities and business are all arguing for maths (including calculus) not to be optional in the senior years of school.

Regards,
Lydia.