Revisiting School Mathematics: Addition and Subtraction

As part of my training as a vocational educator many years ago, I was required to teach a skill of my choice. Limited by a traditional classroom environment, and presented with an audience of seasoned (and largely aged) teachers from a diverse set of disciplines, I decided to deviate from my area of expertise as a high-performance coach, and teach a mathematical skill: the manual calculation of a square root. The algorithm had long since been removed from the Australian mathematics syllabus, so I reasoned that it would be unfamiliar and novel to my audience, and hence an objective test of my ability as an instructor.

The presentation went well, and in closing I invited questions and comments in accordance with the teaching model we had been asked to follow. I anticipated a polite but unenthusiastic response, perhaps with a question or two thrown in as a show of camaraderie. Instead I received a barrage of questions, comments, and lamentation — none of it related to the lesson itself, but rather to their vexation and befuddlement with mathematics more generally.

This unexpected response taught me two things: first, that my adult colleagues, all of whom were tertiary educated, had a very poor understanding of mathematical fundamentals, but more importantly that despite their frustrations with the subject, they were indubitably interested in learning about it. The widespread belief that most people find mathematics dull was being challenged by a class of cooks, designers, managers, and…