Studying Maths

I hated maths as a kid and still do, numbers totally confuse me!

Peasblossom

Do we know what the non-Maths students studied instead?

Could you get the same result with Music or languages I wonder?

I find it hard to believe that learning a language does less for brain plasticity than Maths.

Not to mention that being taught something is not the same as learning it. I spent several years at Secondary school avoiding studying Maths. In spite of being present in the classroom ?

“I find it hard to believe that learning a language does less for brain plasticity than Maths.

So do I. In particular if it’s Greek and Latin.

The maths I studied at school was Algebra, Trigonometry and Logarithms, none of which I have ever used in real life. Thankfully other knowledge I did acquire at school has proved very useful, the one subject neglected at schools is finance and handling money, teaching that would be far more useful than maths.

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I haven’t even got GCE maths. In my day, it was possible to read English at university without it, providing you had Latin GCE, and that’s what I did.

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At the moment in England, those students who didn't get the equivalent of a GCSE old C grade in Y11 have to do GCSE maths in school or college because they can't leave school/college/apprenticeship until aged 18. Wales/Scotland/NI are different.
Maths A level has always been very popular, so that's the 2 ends of the market catered for.
In the 1980s, we had a middling qualification, CEE, certificate in extended education, but it died a death (GCSE? National Curriculum? don't know). We will need a recognised qualification to fill the gap, suitable for smart kids doing other A levels, and teachers to teach it.

For all those who want to restore some maths plasticity (though I’m sure other plasticities would be equally effective for the appropriate subjects), you could try Duolingo Math. apps.apple.com/gb/app/duolingo-math-learn-practice/id1598161822
It’s like being back at school, but more fun and without the ruler on the knuckles in case of errors and no compulsion to do it.

My dil is a maths teacher who loves her job. When she heard that maths is to be compulsory until 18 she wanted to weep. It is, she says, hard enough drumming the basics into disinterested 16 yr olds who show little respect for authority and disrupt the learning of more attentive students. To have to continue a losing battle for a further two years will put an even greater strain on an area where teachers are already in short supply. She favours more practical classes for those who do not want to continue with maths: arithmetic, basic banking skills, budgeting, interest rates and their implications, credit scoring, etc.

I could do maths, but out of all the subjects I took, it was probably the one I enjoyed least. Still, I did managed to pass my Higher Maths without actually sitting the exam!

I was a consistent maths student at school - always bottom of the class. It wasn’t until much later on that I began to finally “get” numbers, but looking at the maths my GS is doing for his GCSEs this year, I know I wouldn’t get over the first fence! I can sight read music and play the piano though.

If they want youngsters to continue studying Maths after GCSE then they need to change the system. At present, to study Maths post GCSE Maths means doing Maths A level and you can only do this if you have a pass 7 (equal to an old A grade). My GD wanted to study Maths but only got a 6, so couldn't do it.

It took me 2 goes to pass O level maths - I don’t think I’d ever have managed A level.

Dh OTOH is/was a ‘natural’ at maths - at least once he had a teacher at junior level who made it all so simple. He got an A in the A level he needed for his degree - and still finds it hard to understand how anyone can find it difficult.

Re establishing neural pathways and music, I took up the piano again after retiring - from a very low base - I’d only ever passed grade 2 - and that was over 50 years previously, so it was more or less a case of starting again from scratch.

My sight reading was at first (of course) virtually non existent, but evidently new pathways were fairly soon established. So instead of seeing (say) a C and and F sharp on the page, having to think ‘C and F sharp’, find and play them, there would be an instant short-cut ‘ping!’ from eyes to brain to fingers.

After several years of practice, I like to think my brain has derived a reasonable amount of benefit.

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I failed Maths O level twice but passed cookery… I’m a hopeless cook but work in finance!

I wasn't particularly good at maths and couldn't face taking A level. In my 40s, somewhat arrogantly, I thought I could bring an understanding of the difficulties of engaging with maths and studied for a BEd to become a maths teacher.

The course was amazing, I was inspired. I found that I was not particularly good at arithmetic but working with numbers was so exciting. My poor family, they were subjected to all sorts of mathematical theories.

I struggled to get a teaching job and worked in supply for years but had to abandon my hopes when recession hit and I needed to make some money.

My subsequent technical career developed rapidly, no longer afraid to work with numbers, I enjoyed the rest of my working life.

Perhaps, when I was at school, the way I was taught lacked inspiration and I couldn't feel confident. Now I still see maths in everything and enjoy the 'beauty in numbers' gained in later life.

Calendargirl, really laughed that you worked in a bank all your life despite some mathematical weakness. My sometimes difficult dealings with them suddenly falls into place now!

I hated maths at school. Never understood it and only realised when I started teacher training that I had no real concept of numbers (I know you would imagine it was just somethng which came naturally but it doesn't)
But even I can see that if you have 136 children aged 14-18 and you scan them twice with 19 months between the scans some of those children are going to be under 16 and some only just 16 which pretty much rubbishes their conclusions as far as I'm concerned. They are in any case adolescents and adolescents brains don't behave always like an adults

FarNorth

^At open evening her maths teacher smiled and said "all correct, well done, but wrong method Mrs C"^

I'd think that if you showed your DD a different method, which she understood, that is better than continuing to struggle with the preferred method.

I wonder if they'd get marked down in GCSEs if they used the wrong method?

Whatever methods DD used, she got a good pass (but didn't take it for 'A' level either).
I wonder why you have to have Maths and Science at GCSE level if you want to teach Modern Languages? To add up the marks?

Missed a lot of school as a child, so very depleted in the Maths area. My father was brilliant at Math, and remember him showing me how to use a slide rule, still math never sunk in, until I became a Student nurse, and this in the days before the easier decimalisation. Working out Insulin doses, morphine doses, and paediatric doses etc. Passed my math with flying colours, you had to get 100% or you failed, quite rightly so, in the end became proficient at math. Now do a daily language to keep my brain working.

At open evening her maths teacher smiled and said "all correct, well done, but wrong method Mrs C"

I'd think that if you showed your DD a different method, which she understood, that is better than continuing to struggle with the preferred method.

Callistemon

varian

I might be wrong Callistemon but I'd guess that if you spent these years avoiding maths when it was compulsory, you were unlikely to have volunteered to study more maths when it was optional.

I do agree that this study seems a bit perfunctory and I hope they will extend it to address some of the questions raised here.

I didn't avoid maths, varian - what on earth makes you think that?

Do you not realise that if something is in italics it is quoting someone else's words? I was quoting Peasblossom, I thought it was funny.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to take GCSE maths.
That's because I'm too old but I did get a good mark at GCE but decided to take languages at 'A' level instead.

My brain can't have much plasticity then, although I did use maths (and science) in a later career.

It all sounds like intellectual snobbery to me.

There is always one, isn't there, so that must be me. I hated maths and didn't sit it for GCSE either. However, when I was 62 I enrolled in the Adult GCSE Maths class at my local college and proving that miracle do happen, I passed.