How should mathematics be taught to non-mathematicians?

Tim Gowers:

Michael Gove, the UK's Secretary of State for Education, has expressed a wish to see almost all school pupils studying mathematics in one form or another up to the age of 18. An obvious question follows. At the moment, there are large numbers of people who give up mathematics after GCSE (the exam that is usually taken at the age of 16) with great relief and go through the rest of their lives saying, without any obvious regret, how bad they were at it. What should such people study if mathematics becomes virtually compulsory for two more years?

A couple of years ago there was an attempt to create a new mathematics A-level called Use of Mathematics. I criticized it heavily in a blog post, and stand by those criticisms, though interestingly it isn't so much the syllabus that bothers me as the awful exam questions. One might think that a course called Use of Mathematics would teach you how to come up with mathematical models for real-life situations, but these questions did, and still do, the opposite. They describe a real-life situation, then tell you that it "may be modelled" by some formula, and proceed to ask you questions that are purely mathematical, and extremely easy compared with A-level maths.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at June 9, 2012 2:40 AM
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