Thoughts on Simon Jenkins’ article . In this article, he makes the case for more weight to be put on oracy, students' ability to express themselves, in the curriculum. The arguments he makes for this are excellent: as social media increasingly drives us apart, speaking, "listening, debating and handling disagreement" are essential skills currently overlooked by many schools. However, he also makes this argument at the expense of what he describes as "subjects" such as maths and French. I'm a computer scientist and use maths constantly in my daily life. But I want to make the case, even for readers who don't, for maths as a vital, or even beautiful part of the curriculum.
Who doesn't need the maths taught in school?
Jenkins is not the first person to believe that much of the maths taught in school is something people "never use". That may feel true for many people, but the truth is we all use the maths taught to us in school every day. Anybody who's ever tried to budget, worked out their tax returns, designed a DIY project, worked out how much paint they need, or decided between investments has "used" maths. Anecdotally, I had a friend come to me laughing hysterically as they couldn't work out, with all their courses weighted differently, what they would need to get in their last exam for a first in history. You might laugh along too, but ask yourself how easy you'd actually find it if you had to. They got their first in the end.
The world is increasingly mathematical, refusing to understand it means surrendering control.
Beyond your finances and DIY, this is perhaps the most important aspect of why we should learn maths. Computers, the internet, advertising, social media algorithms and, most pressingly, AI, are all based on maths. Tech companies have ever-expanding control and influence over our lives. They have, for the most part, made fortunes with technology based on maths. If you have no mathematical ability, these technologies that increasingly govern our lives become even more opaque than they already are. Leaving maths to the "purists" further concentrates these powerful resources in the hands of the few.
Moreover, not being able to understand statistics or data at all is a fundamental barrier to taking part in politics. Being able to interpret polls, budget decisions, and voting systems all depend on maths. If you are mathematically and statistically illiterate, spotting misinformation in claims by politicians or by others online is incredibly difficult. Closing yourself off to maths opens you up to manipulation. The recent Guardian piece on 'dodgy' data in party leaflets highlights this. Have a read of the article, pick a leaflet and ask yourself whether you have the mathematical instinct to see that the data is 'dodgy'. If you do, ask yourself if you can explain why, and how you'd check. If you're feeling concerned about either of those prospects, the University of Washington's course Calling Bullshit is a nice place to start.
Maths isn't only useful.
Finally, setting aside practicality for a moment, I'd like to question what it means for something to need to be taught. There are many reasons we are taught Shakespeare in school. It is partly because reading widely helps us better understand the world, it is partly to stretch our minds as we muddle over Elizabethan English, but it is also because Shakespeare is art. It is fun and it is beautiful and studying it, reading it, or going to the theatre to watch it holds a certain value greater than the skills it gives us. Maths is often singled out as the subject that only has value insofar as it is useful. I would push back against that. Our one-size-fits-all education system sucks a lot of the joy out of maths, as indeed it does Shakespeare, but anybody who's ever cracked a cryptic crossword, solved a Sudoku, answered a tricky riddle and got that deeply satisfying feeling knows why the so-called "purists" love maths so much. Maths, even up to the research level, is about solving puzzles. That feeling of discomfort whilst you work through a problem and the reward of solving it at the end is what mathematicians and puzzle solvers alike chase.
To close, mathematicians find their work beautiful. In a recent interview, Steven Strogatz, a mathematics professor at Cornell, went so far as to say that a mathematician's relationship to their work is "sexual, slightly". I'm not asking you to relate to that, but to at least appreciate that maths need not be a purely utilitarian subject, but something that's satisfying and at times can have all the beauty of Shakespeare.
"The mathematician’s patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s, must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics."
- G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology (1940).