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Why must everyone be forced to do maths?

May I make some remarks in response to Ronel Klatzkin’s How to master anxiety about maths in the 17 January edition of the SA Jewish Report? I have been a maths teacher/town planner in my time. Like Klatzkin, my school experience of maths was abysmal. My favourite subjects were English, Latin, and History. Our maths master was an arrogant bully, and we had an aversion to one another. Fortunately for me, in my matric year (1955), I had a master who showed me that I could prove riders!

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4 years ago

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Peter Onesta, Johannesburg

At the University of the Witwatersrand, I met a Catholic priest who was doing a BSc in order to teach at St Benedict’s Boys School (in Bedfordview). He told me to get Silvanus Thompson’s Calculus Made Easy, with Thompson’s motto, “What one fool can do another can!” Also, a beautifully written text by W. Briggs and G Bryan: The Right Line and Cycle (on co-ordinate geometry). These saved many a student’s bacon, and spurred my own interest in mathematical logic, which ties philosophy to language.

Why must everyone be forced to do maths? There is a good discussion of this in New Directions in Mathematics. Professor Kopenhauer quotes CP Snow who says that some people are “mathematically blind”. In response, Professor Besicovitch says, “The majority are.” At least half the children shouldn’t be taught beyond simple counting, to count change and so on, he said. Besicovitch was “musically blind”, and his music teacher spared him the misery of singing. 

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