By: Blonde One
Image Source: pixabay.com
Nothing strikes fear into the heart of an English teacher more than the words ‘Maths cover lesson’! I had this very situation to deal with and I almost broke onto a cold sweat at the thought of it. If you know anything about me you will probably know that I don’t really do well with Maths. I got my O level at school but that’s about it. I have been known to suggest that I’m allergic to numbers! It’s a good job that Little Miss Blonde takes after Mr Blonde One in her love of Maths and accounting.
So what began as a normal, very lovely day, was a little bit spoiled when I saw that I needed to cover a Maths teacher for a year 10 lesson. Luckily for me the Maths teacher had set some work that didn’t involve me having to get involved. I took the register then sat back with my pile of marking. It didn’t take long for my ears to prick up. There was a conversation going on between two boys about which track they had taken up Mount Snowdon. I listened in as they discussed the merits of the Miner’s track compared to the Llanberis. Conversation then turned to a comparison of down jackets and walking boots. After listening for several more minutes I reluctantly reminded them that they should be working (as well as chatting. They can multi-task quite well at Trinity.). The two mountaineers then informed me that the Maths problem the class had been set revolved around the height of Snowdon and the lengths of the different paths. All of a sudden I was excited to be there! My marking was instantly abandoned as I opened up my own Maths text book and set about tackling the problems. I’ve always known I’m quite good at route card Maths so the Snowdon Maths was easy too. The class benefitted from all of my mathematical knowledge (I’m not sure they actually wanted it) about feet to metres conversion, timings of Snowdon summits and comparisons with other mountains.
Lots of maths teachers feel that the new maths exams are too wordy and create a barrier if your reading and comprehension ability is not great, and I would agree. However, I proved today that if you can make maths relevant to real life and hook the reader in with a topic of interest, then the puzzles seem less daunting.
I wonder how I will get on with a physics, textiles or RS cover lesson?
My favourite maths lessons are bearings and trigonometry where I always harp on about stomping around in dartmoor and measuring the height of hills!!!! I even have laminated Dartmoor maps for my bearings lessons!!! Great fun!!!
David Hockney was a contemporary (one year ahead) of mine at Bradford Grammar School. There was a myth that when he was given his O Level maths paper he wrote on it “I can’t do maths, but I can draw” and then proceeded to draw on the paper. Well he didn’t do so badly in the end without maths. That paper would worth a few pennies today.
It’s all terribly sad. And it was characterised in the fifties when C. P. Snow (later Lord Snow), a former scientist who also wrote rather stultifying novels, published an article called The Twin Cultures which described the bias against science (and by implication mathematics) among intellectuals and pseudo intellectuals. That not only were Eng. Lit. types ignorant of science but they were prone to saying that not knowing anything about science didn’t prevent them from being regarded as thinkers.
Snow summarised it this way: whereas quite a few scientists had read Shakespeare, etc, almost no Eng. Litters could even quote the Second Law of Thermodymamics, a basic tenet in physics.
As a teenage journalist I knew a little bit about quite a lot, but nothing in depth. Called up to National Service I was tested by the RAF and told I would be trained to repair electronic equipment carried in warplanes. The course would last eight months, five and a half days a week, 8.30 am to 5 pm, and would start with a lesson entitled The Structure Of The Atom. Secretly I laughed at the idea; if I was anything I was Eng. Lit., there was no way they could teach me that hard stuff. But nine months later, having passed about twenty-five exams (failure: any score below 60%), I was on a plane to Singapore where I would repair VHF transmitter/receiver units.
Ah, you say, we are all potential Strasbourg geese, ready to be stuffed with facts rather than liver-enriching grain. But electronics is more than facts. At a certain point one can only proceed via a familiarity with certain equations; analogies just don’t work. And as I began to understand the physical world rendered symbolically I saw the beauty. Back in civvies I applied for and got different kinds of journalistic jobs, notably in the USA.
Things have changed somewhat in the interim; telly regularly shows programmes about science and maths. Nor am I saying I could have covered the maths class. But I do regard myself as lucky. That a notoriously inflexible institution had said I could do hard stuff and had gone on to prove the point. And had changed my life.
One problem. Work often identified as maths should more exactly be called arithmetic.
Conrads astute comments really strike a chord – enjoyable reading, Sir.
I have always been inclined towards people who learn things – I’m one myself I suppose, occasionally slow on the uptake and often intrigued by the slightly unusual. Sundials. Cryptography. Archaeology and history. Tales of adventure and moments of discovery. I’ve been told in various guises that I make a good if unconventional teacher of what I take interest in, though I’ve never been engaged as one in the school sense. At work, yes, in hobbies like archery or amateur radio or wild-camping, yes, and I’ve even done the FAETC course and been an exam question writer for C&G, but away from the confines of a formal educational process learning can be often be achieved by a more flexible, creative, “alternatively structured” environment and I think improved results can be achieved by way of it.
By mostly avoiding the confines of formal processes, I have engaged with learners aged from 8 – 86 years. For those who don’t know of it there is a delight in seeing “the penny drop” for folks of any age, and the pride that someone achieves from an exam pass-slip isn’t confined to the student either – a joy is a joy and better for being shared by all involved at any age.
In the field of amateur radio I recall three memorable examples of what is spoken of in this thread; 1) a teenage girl who’s father was smart enough as a parent to take his daughter to the course I ran in the Radio Amateurs Examination (RAE) as it was then. Her friends thought she was “geeky”. That geek passed her RAE and is now in a well-rewarded communications-based career with the RAF. I get a wave every time she drives by when home on leave, and that is as ample a mutual reward as seeing the smile when she got her RAE pass. 2) An ex-serviceman who had been interested in radio for decades but knew his ability in maths wasn’t great, which undermined his confidence. That hadn’t been improved by stifling harmful maths teachers and teaching methods judging by his descriptions of them, yet his ability to understand and describe that necessary to pass the RAE beyond maths was exceptional. He genuinely didn’t realise that 0.5 of something was a half of it, yet he could describe the processes of tuned circuit selectivity, or amplification, or ionospheric propagation perfectly. With a little help he achieved a Distinction in both RAE papers. It is humbling to be thanked for helping someone get a pass-slip they had secretly hankered after for half a lifetime, and irritating to think that limited teaching at a young age had in part been responsible for denial of that achievement over many years. The man is now involved with teaching of army cadets, including communications – a boon almost lost to him, the students, and even the nation I would suggest. 3) An 86 year-old who had been interested in radio since the first UK Wireless Exhibition at Alexandra Palace in 1920 I believe, yet he too had been deemed by “experts” as “too dim” to seek a technical career from youth and was directed to a clerical life using his English ability instead. Never did he lose his interest in “tinkering” though, and he was very very good at it. I saw the Hale-Bopp comet in 1997 through a telescope he had made in the 1950’s, including grinding the lenses and making and silvering the mirrors himself. He showed me a VHF “walkie-talkie” he had made using valves in the 1940’s – tethered to a mains-lead admittedly, but a valved VHF walkie-talkie nonetheless! Why had he not done the RAE? Because at a young age he had been cruelly told he was no good at maths. Another example of someone who didn’t grasp the maths teaching he was faced with maybe, but certainly had a brain capable of gaining that achievement another way. He didn’t do anything with his subsequent RAE pass other than keep in touch with friends by radio after his wife died and up until his own demise, but is that not a benefit that could have been lost too?
Be proud of your “alternative” teaching. It may well be that you delivered an education by it that was approached with greater enthusiasm, understood by a more engaged mind, and will never be forgotten as a result. That’s good teaching and much better as an “alternative” than the ineffective sort!
Thanks for your mention, but your comment and its subject matter seemed to be more appropriate to my big brother’s comment (RR above) who is a good example of what you are saying. Surprisingly in his case taken to new ground by the RAF rather than an individual visionary teacher.
Rich B: I am grateful to my brother for stepping in. I imagined your comment was addressed to me but didn’t care to suggest this and somehow risk diminishing the impact of your long and heartfelt comment.
And wow! “a VHF “walkie-talkie” he had made using valves in the 1940’s” I was born in 1935 and there is an overlap. My RAF service covered 1955-57 which means that the gear I worked on pre-dated the transistor; valves and their vulnerabilities were my meat and drink. Alas I was never very good at repairing the VHF Tr/Rx but the theory I picked up gave me a new slant on the physical world and encouraged to explore and write about technicalities.
If you drop in on my blog:
http://ldptonedeaf.blogspot.co.uk/
there may be things of interest. I got fed up with the fact that no one to my knowledge had written a novel where the central character was a real live engineer and what he did for a living formed part of the story. Hence my novel Gorgon Times. Not that I’m trying to flog it but the Kindle version is available for peanuts.
Your comment meant a lot to me.
I can recommend Gorgon Times it is well written and thoroughly enjoyable. Still waiting for another one Robbie!
Apologies to both Robinsons for my error, thanks for the correction and the blog information. Interest can be found even by accident!