It’s all very well for the prime minister to insist that everyone should be taught maths until the age of 18. In my case, I had more or less thrown in the towel by the age of eight. It was at that point that I had an exam paper passed back to me by a long-suffering maths teacher with the comment, long since seared on my mind: ‘Nought out of 20. But I did like the drawing of the horse.’
From then on my schooldays turned into an existential struggle between me and maths. Maths, if this is the right way to express it, won. I never passed another maths exam in my life. In those days the lower level of senior exams were called O-levels. In tandem with a classmate, we both recorded the lowest failure grade possible on three consecutive occasions. He went on to write the definitive history of 1960s pop music. I went on to be an accountant (among other things).
The idea that certain people are inherently good or bad at maths is a self-fulfilling notion
The fallacy
The problem with the idea of my maths experience is that it produces, if it spreads widely, a lopsided and frustrated society. As one US educationalist put it recently, the commonly accepted idea that certain people are inherently either good or bad at maths is a fallacy and a self-fulfilling notion.
In other words, parents console their struggling schoolchildren by saying that they too weren’t awfully good at maths either.
And that way another generation of lost education lies. Studies in the US show that where students internalise the idea that they will get better at maths the more they work at it, they do in fact do better. That way improved maths outcomes will follow.
Meanwhile, all the surveys show the opposite is happening. People haven’t a clue what ‘equity’ means, still less ‘GDP’, or even simple interest rate calculations and, even more worryingly, what an ‘overdraft’ might be.
By emphasising the grind rather than the results and rewards, people are deterred by the whole idea
Often, as the prime minister would undoubtedly say, the panacea is seen as more education – involving more years in the classroom on basic maths or specialised financial literacy programmes. None of this really works, just as it doesn’t with basic accountancy. The problem is that by emphasising the grind rather than the possible results and rewards, people are inevitably deterred by the whole idea.
The same fallacy is true for accountancy. The argument is lost once the perception that it is only for that strange and mysterious breed who are ‘good at numbers’ becomes part of the culture. As a result, whole areas of life are seen as unachievable and unreachable.
Wrong angle
People tend to approach the problem from the wrong angle. Telling kids at school that grinding on at maths until they are beyond the age of eighteen, or that they must attend special classes on mortgages and productivity statistics, is never going to have them up on their feet and cheering. The focus should be on what the results will look and feel like.
People in the financial world are not successful because they are from a different planet where ‘numerate’ is the lingua franca
If a teacher had convinced me at the age of 16 that learning, say, the piano and French, would mean that I could spend my student holidays in Paris with the women of my dreams gazing adoringly at me over the top of a piano lid, then my academic life could have been transformed.
The same goes for financial literacy. People in the financial world are not successful because they are from a different planet where ‘numerate’ is the lingua franca. They have access to a comfortable and financially rewarding life because they prove to be reasonably good with people, understand how organisations work, spot opportunities or competitive advantages that others don’t, and find themselves in the right place at the right time because of all this and, often but not always, are happy and satisfied. If that was painted as the point of being reasonably financially literate, then the loathing of the idea of maths might melt away.
As the statistics guru Tim Harford said in a recent blog: ‘If people feel helpless in the face of numbers, they will be vulnerable and frustrated from the supermarket to the voting booth. It is no basis for a healthy, happy society.’
And that is the clincher in the argument. If people who feel they are on the outside, and don’t understand why, can be brought inside, then life becomes easier and happier.
