Adding things up

THE FRIDAY THING: EDUCATION, or maybe the lack of it, is on the agenda as a team of 60 teachers from China head to the UK to teach our youngsters how to do their sums.


Apparently, Chinese teachers are better than our home-grown educators and will be able to give even the not-so-bright sparks in 4D lessons in how to add up, subtract and multiply Multiplication should be no problem for the Chinese, bearing in mind how many people there are in China.

Anyway, It will come as no surprise that our home-grown teachers are opposed to the intervention of the learned folk from Shanghai.

The general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, Christine Blower, says it is ridiculous to think that teachers from China will have more knowledge or expertise than our own teachers (well, except in reading and writing in Chinese, obviously).

In fact there seems to be plenty of evidence that in maths, the Chinese are way ahead of our home-grown students, who struggle to gain fluency in basic arithmetic and are thus unprepared for the challenge of subjects such as algebra - a word that sends shivers of dark recollection down my spine, which perhaps proves the point.

The English-speaking maths teachers will spend a month or so spreading the word about maths and giving pupils guidance on practising the finer points of doing and understanding sums.

Former schools minister Nick Gibb says maths ability comes with constant practice - but there is an aversion to practise in this country, and we could have a lot to learn from China.

I recall a GCSE in maths at school, described by my maths teacher as the greatest surprise of his teaching career. Indeed, it was something of a surprise to me too...


FINAL WORD: I don’t know about you but when I was at school (we are delving into the dark and distant past here) we had names for most of our all-male teachers.
Punishment for being overheard using any of these less than flattering names was swift and merciless.

I was reminded of this by a story about a 14-year-old boy who was banned from his school for a time for calling a teacher Barry which is, in fact, his real name.

The teacher said he felt undermined by someone using his real name (by which he presumably meant his real first name, since teachers prefer a Godlike, Sirry status), which suggests teachers no longer have the thick skins they had in my day.

The only good thing to come out of this episode, of course, will be the new names conjured up for the teacher by his pupils. But he won’t be hearing those...