Teaching maths would not be

my number one choice of occupation. I was never particularly fond of "arithmetic" at school. I usually got things right. I would manage ten out of ten for "mental" arithmetic. I knew the difference between a square and a rectangle in geometry. I certainly knew my "times tables". Mum saw to that!

When I was teaching I would sometimes fling a "five times eight" or "seven times six" at a child who was not concentrating on the task at hand. "Yes, you do need to know it all that well," I would tell them. There were sighs and groans but I kept telling them how useful it would be.

Times tables are useful. Being able to add, subtract, multiply and divide is useful too. My class made paper houses using all those things.  We struggled with "bases" and "set theory". Unless any of them went on to do mathematics at university I doubt anyone in the class remembers any of that - but they might still know how to work out how many tiles they need when they do their bathroom renovations.

I thought of all this as I read yet another complaint that we are not teaching enough maths and not enough of the right sort of maths in schools. The Senior Cat worried about this and about the failure to phonics and spelling and grammar and many other things. He would argue that "the basics" or "the building blocks" should come before the "coding" and more. Yes, we want people who can write programs for computers but we also need people who can work out many tiles are needed to tile the bathroom. The person writing about this was saying much the same thing. 

In the latest round of NAPLAN results it has been interesting to discover that the schools with the "best" results (the highest scores) are schools where there has been a return to more traditional teaching methods. I know there are arguments for and against this but I saw the old "Qualifying Certificate" papers my parents did and then looked at the "Progress Certificate" papers my brother and I did. We had never heard of coding, indeed computers were almost non-existent. My brother knows a great deal about that sort of thing now but he has also made sure his own children and then grandchildren know "the basics". I made sure the Whirlwind knew her times tables and that she could apply her arithmetic skills to every day life.

I had to call in at a house where there is a nine year old boy. He was doing his "homework", in this case a project which spread over the weekend. He was making a model and struggling to work out if he had a piece of cardboard which was big enough. His father was trying to help and getting the response, "But we don't do it like that!" I thought it was going to end in tears but his mother stepped in and guided him through the process in "the old way". Both his parents were given a much more traditional education and they think things like "times tables" are important. 

I wonder if children might be more interested and ready to learn if we could show them how some of these basic skills apply to everyday life?  It might also save them from some frustration. 

I also wonder if teaching some of these basic skills in "the old way" and expecting children to behave in ways which allow them to learn might save much more than frustration - for everyone.