It’s stirred some to speak out, they’ve had enough. Of the recent hoo-ha? No, not of that. But of the bright idea from the ‘numbers man’ to get everyone to stay in school until 18 to do maths apparently. So, I’m going to put my 2 pence worth forward. I also work in finance for various industries, but have also worked in a range of other jobs before finding my career path. In a time when we have job disappearing with the closure of businesses left, right and centre, and they talk of robots taking over our future, you would think it might be prudent to have a conversation about where it is all going and what jobs there might be for people to train for. Or is it that they will require lots of coders in the future, and they will adjust the ‘maths’ program to incorporate computers and binary, so won’t be maths as we knew it. Because if it was, then the consensus seems pretty clear, it is not a useful subject by any means at further level, and will bore some people out of their mind. And that was said by someone who loved maths (I have a friend who is a maths teacher, so know some people do love it), but for some, it is not a natural process to be able to deal with and organise numbers and work with them. They are better with words, or art, or practical subjects. And mostly to be fair, you can either pick up or be taught along the way if you have a decent brain and someone takes the time to show you, at any point in your life. You don’t stop learning just because you leave school, and many realise how much they didn’t learn by being at school. Being bright, and being ‘intelligent’ by someone else’s scale are two very different things.
Maybe it’s just they don’t know what to do with 16-18-year-olds, so they want to tie them up in compulsory education, at a time when they would more inclined to find themselves and where they might fit in the adult world they are becoming part of. Because regardless of whether you might choose to identify as a child, or a young person, who are required to take part in the adult world once you reach a certain age. I wonder if we will start to see children identifying as older people, claiming to be a 30-year-old trapped in a 10-year-old body? I’m sure the pedo elite would love that, given the recent statements filtering onto the internet about how it’s becoming an acceptable attitude. So seems even stranger that children of a certain age, i.e. 4 year olds in Scotland for example, are allowed to change their gender, or idea of it on paper for now, but don’t have any say in what they are taught? Grown up life Decisions allowed there, but not apparently when you are nearly grown up? Old enough to vote at 16 they say, but not old enough to leave school at the same age? It’s an odd series of blurred lines creeping in, another good way to separate generations of people, who may only be 10 years apart, but they end growing up in a completely different educational climate, with different rules. Makes for an isolating experience perhaps from those older than you, and then they will do it again to the next younger generation after that. My article A lost generation touched on that idea a bit. But we have had a varying age of consent in this country, as have others, and as we are told, children didn’t go to school previously and mostly were made to work. So was it ever about education, or merely a tool to remove a big part of the ‘workforce’ and a growing up process that many went through. I am not a fan of child labour by any means, but was a child who wanted to work and contribute in some way. Didn’t want to have pocket money, I wanted a job. Now, that could just be because I wasn’t actually given pocket money, I had to earn it, my mum used to trade me, a clean bathroom got £1 and sometimes she would let me clean the whole house for £5 when I got to be a young teenager. Enterprising on her part, no? But I was also the sandwich maker, the tea maker, and generally the helpful one. Working out years later why my sister appeared to make a crap cup of tea when living at home, but seemed to actually make quite a good one once away from home. For all my observation skills, I missed a trick there and took pride in what I did, and wanted it to be good, even if it meant I got saddled with the job thereafter. Until you put your foot down of course, but when you are young, you don’t always know when to, and if it means stamping on someone else’s want, be prepared for the fallout.
But back to the two years of maths, a strange thing to focus on when we apparently have all sorts of jobs and skills shortages, needing manual workers, hospitality staff, healthcare staff, doctors, teachers etc. Where the pay isn’t up to scratch many say, so not necessarily a shortage of the skills, but a shortage of willing to pay for them? And what will the extra numeracy achieve in this quest for re-education of that 8 million adults who are said to have the numeracy skills of a child our numbers man mentions? How will it help them? Another odd thing to say was “statistics underpin every job”. Not sure I follow on that, unless you are measuring something in percentages for the purpose of analysis, to create statistics for something, they don’t just appear. Stats don’t underpin jobs in my opinion, skills, requirement, supply and demand does surely? Whatever the real reason for coming out with this ‘plan’, it is as full of holes as all the others, but does beg the question. Where exactly is this going? Do they just want to demoralise each generation in unique ways, and then continue to hold them down thereafter? Hoping that the continued parading of ineptitude will just wear people down and make them give up or accept the inanity. In fact, it seems that is indeed what has happened, but over the last number of decades, and we just didn’t quite notice. But now there is so much public coverage of things and instant news at everyone’s fingertips, it’s all out there for everyone to see and the childish, egotistical and unprofessional behaviour of so many is quite disturbing. But these days, it seems as though there is a lot of disturbing to go around…
