Rebranding maths as numeracy? It doesn’t add up

Rename math to numeracy? It doesn't stick

Two government advisers say the subject sounds 'scary' and 'difficult', while academics warn of 'math anxiety'. Would changing a few names really help?

Mathematics: your number is up. Photography: Vikram Raghuvanshi/Getty Images/iStockphoto/posed by model

Name: Good question. Let's move on to "the discipline formerly known as math".

Age: About 2,500 years old.

Appearance: Full of X's and Y's, triangles and stuff.

Ah, we can finally talk about the dazzling beauty of Euclidean geometry and the sheer intellectual satisfaction of algebra. Hush, stop it. You will scare people.

So we're not talking about math? Yes, but we don't call it math. According to Andy Haldane, former head of the government's leveling task force, mathematics sounds “academic and scary”.
Advertisement

What does he offer instead? Numeracy. “Calling it math… makes it sound quite conceptual,” he says. "Some people don't understand conceptual things."

But it's conceptual! That's why it's exciting: math is a beautiful and creative way to make sense of the universe. Calm down, Pythagoras. For most of us, these are bad memories of broken protractors and reduced fractions: things we never used after taking the GCSE. Haldane thinks we should emphasize "real world" math, not scare people away with the square on the hypotenuse. We need to get the message out that numbers matter "because it's important that we can live our lives in a financially sustainable way, making choices about money and savings, spending, pensions and jobs," he said.

Pfft. He’s taking something thrilling and making it deathly dull. It’s all very well raving about Fermat and Lagrange, but not everyone can get excited about calculus. Four out of five adults have low functional mathematics skills, according to a 2014 report from National Numeracy, and nearly 17 million adults in the UK have numerical skills roughly equivalent to primary schoolchildren. We need to make maths more approachable to address that.

This all sounds like intellectual snowflakery to me. But “mathematics anxiety” is a real phenomenon: research at Cambridge University found that many children and adults experience “feelings of anxiety, apprehension, tension or discomfort when confronted by a maths problem”, even when they’re good at maths.

How can anyone be intimidated by pi? It’s so satisfying. No, you’re thinking of pie.

Ha ha. If we’re rebranding maths, should we call algebra “the one with the letters” and trigonometry “triangle studies”? Are quadratic equations “number Wordle”? Good thinking. Government social mobility commissioner Katharine Birbalsingh recently and controversially claimed girls don’t do physics because of the “hard maths” – maybe she would like us to tell them it involves “interesting numeracy” instead?

Do say: “My improved numeracy skills mean I really understand my household budget now!”

Don’t say: “With inflation nearing 10% and wages only up 4.2%, you don’t need to be Rachel Riley to work out that something doesn’t add up.”


* Nguồn bài viết Tư vấn du học Anh Quốc - Quốc Tế Du Học Đồng Thịnh dongthinh.co.uk (+84) 96 993.7773 | (+84) 96 1660.266 | (+44) 020 753 800 87 | info@dongthinh.co.uk