A SILLY STORY
Graham Meale, October 1997
Once upon a time, the education department sent a memo to schools, describing changes to the way maths was to be taught. From now on, it said, there will be no maths in infants or primary school. When kids get to high school, they will experience maths for about an hour a week over the first two years, and thereafter, if they like it, they can study it for almost three hours a week. All maths classes will have fifty students. And rather than every student owning a calculator, there will be one calculator per classroom.
Of course, we all know that if such a decree were handed down, there would be little short of rioting in the streets and an embarrassing back-down from the minister. But this is a silly story, so let's continue.
Within a few years, there had been a huge reduction in the number of maths teachers. Most large high schools had only two, some only one. There were no maths teachers on school executives. Without head teachers trained in maths, the few remaining teachers had to design all their teaching programs themselves.
There were a small number of parents who recognised the value of maths, and who had their kids privately coached since early childhood. These kids stood out when they arrived at high school, and were, in many cases, extremely competent. But the majority of Year 7 students had never been shown how to recognise numerals, so the most that could be expected by the end of Year 8, with so little time, such huge classes and so few resources, was that the more able kids might be able to do simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. This frustrated the kids, too, as they knew that there was much more to maths than this, and many desperately wanted to be competent in it.
Maths teachers became increasingly frustrated over the years, but as there were so few of them (and none in positions of influence) there was little that they could do. (One is reminded of a certain armless and legless knight in Monty Python's Holy Grail, who was accused of being pusillanimous.) Other teachers had no concept of their problems and didn't want to know. The minority of parents who were convinced of the value of maths — the ones who had their kids privately coached — weren't much help either, because they realised the enormity of the problem and knew how impossible it was to change anything in the system. Easier for them to bundle their kids off to one of the few private schools that taught maths properly, and be done with it. Maths teachers got no support from their union, either, as it was almost as big and unwieldy as the education department, and, when it all boiled down, its members only supported their own interests, not those of tiny minorities. And academics in their lofty institutions were reluctant to speak out, as rocking the boat has never been a good career move. They just considered themselves lucky to be there. Anything other than teaching in a school!
Things went from bad to worse. Maths teachers began to find that they couldn't cope. Many of the better ones began to resign. Those that stuck with it often faced breakdowns and medical retirements.
As the number and quality of students studying maths through to the end of high school declined, the intake into tertiary institutions reflected this. Eventually there became a massive shortage of maths teachers, both permanent and casual, and the quality of their teaching fell. The department's solution was to fast-track maths teacher training courses, but this was a short-sighted, stop-gap measure, and was found only to exacerbate the problem. Eventually the situation became so desperate that the department suggested removing maths from the curriculum altogether. Parents who objected could pay for private tuition, they said.
One day, around twenty years after that original memo, the department decided to cut its losses. As it was now so difficult to provide schools with maths teachers, they said, the subject would be abolished. Schools could, if they desired, get professionals to come into schools and tutor maths in small groups, but students would have to pay. If they couldn't then they would do without.
Thus endeth my silly story. It would never happen, because it is so absurd. But hang on. Is it so silly? Substitute music for maths in the above, and most of it has already happened, or will, in the near future.
Let's look at some of the silly bits. Classes of fifty? I believe that teaching a class of fifty in maths, though horrendous, would be less stressful, more productive and more rewarding than teaching a class of thirty in music, all other factors being equal. And I reckon that I'm in a pretty good position to make such a judgement, as maths is my second teaching subject and I have had experience teaching it (hence my choice of maths to make my point — it could probably have been several other subjects).
One calculator per classroom? How absurd! But music teachers have to put up with one MIDI computer set-up per classroom, and often their resources fall way short in other areas, too.
Isn't maths more complex and involved than music? Only a non-musician would ask such a question. In music we are learning a new language, learning physical co-ordination, learning to communicate, learning about emotion and self-expression, then if there's time (which there isn't) learning all the theory, the history, and experiencing a vast body of music of countless different genres from throughout the world and over the centuries.
But music is taught in primary schools, I hear the department retort. Rubbish. Almost all primary teachers feel so out of their depth in music that the very most they ever attempt is perhaps banging tambourines to a CD. Some schools are better than others, but in the absence of departmental minimum requirements (and huge improvements to teacher training), the whole situation is quite haphazard. Most secondary music teachers can assume nothing of kids arriving at high school.
But don't we devote much more time and energy to teaching maths because it's more important? Or could it be that people think maths is more important because we devote so much more time and energy to teaching it? There is a growing body of research (way beyond the scope of this "silly story") that indicates that a proper experience of music is an essential part of the education of the whole person. That kids who are involved in music excel in many other areas. And that while society ponders the increasing incidence of violence, drug abuse and youth crime, we might be better off putting a safety fence at the top of the cliff rather than more ambulances at the bottom.
I remember talking to someone once who reckoned that any food that tastes good couldn't be good for you. Perhaps people think that music is unimportant because it can be fun?