Sir, – Alex Staveley (August 19th) blames the teaching of faith in primary school for the poor results in Leaving Cert maths and sciences. He asserts that “the majority of primary schools are openly telling young learning minds it is possible to reach conclusions on matters of truth without any analytical scientific or mathematical thinking”. I don’t know of any primary school that has done this and I doubt if there is a single teenager in the country who is now blaming Jesus Christ for their Leaving Cert results.
Perhaps Mr Staveley would be able to share the results of the analytical scientific research that has carried out to support his statement or is this something we should simply accept “by faith”? – Yours, etc,
Sir, – To be mathematically incapable, in our society, is worn as badge of honour. One rarely hears an adult wax lyrical in the local about their inability to write or their confusion with business. Why is this so?
Our educators, those working in our media, indeed most of our politicians have qualifications in the humanities where the “maths is hard” mentality holds strong. If we require mathematically-able school-leavers and graduates we need a radical overhaul of how we approach maths and science.
First, those who educate in these fields should be trained sufficiently. Second, all levels of our educational system need to spend far more time on teaching children how to solve problems in a logical and deductive manner. It is true that they won’t know as many of Yeats’s poems by heart or the words to Báidín Fheilimí after 15 years of education but they will be better trained to think.
Finally, to swing the educational balance back towards these areas we need to provide incentives – to those who teach mathematics and to those who dare to pursue it. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Dermot Fagan (August 19th) missed the point about higher CAO points for maths: the extra points are to encourage more students to study maths at a higher level.
Industry needs more science and engineering graduates and maths is at the core of these disciplines.
He dismisses the fact that fewer than half of maths teachers are qualified in the subject. How would he feel if his doctor trained as a vet or his tax accountant was an estate agent? The only way to improve grades in maths is to have teachers who are comfortable with the subject. The fact that primary school teachers require only a bare pass in maths means that many students leave primary school with at best a poor grounding. Then in secondary school they have a 50 per cent chance of being taught by someone who themselves may have barely passed maths in the leaving certificate, went on to study Irish or geography and never had to study maths again.
It is amazing so many do pass the subject. – Yours, etc,