WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:20.260 The astronomer Galileo Galilei observed in 00:00:20.251 --> 00:00:25.591 1623 that the entire universe is written in the language of mathematics. 00:00:25.591 --> 00:00:34.591 Indeed, such musical notions as octaves, chords, scales and keys can all be understood logically using simple mathematics. 00:00:36.591 --> 00:00:40.511 But at what age should children first experience maths? 00:00:40.502 --> 00:00:45.482 I think you've got to start teaching children even pre-nursery age. 00:00:45.942 --> 00:00:47.442 You've got to expose them to numbers. 00:00:47.602 --> 00:00:51.162 You've got to expose them to equipment that's going to allow them to manipulate numbers. 00:00:51.782 --> 00:00:54.662 And then it should be strong right from there on. 00:00:55.722 --> 00:00:58.342 And as students move on from those first building blocks, 00:00:58.742 --> 00:01:00.742 how do we keep students engaged with sometimes... 00:01:00.752 --> 00:01:03.352 very alien concepts. 00:01:03.352 --> 00:01:07.752 As a teacher I feel very passionate about making sure that children are coming into 00:01:07.752 --> 00:01:12.132 my maths lessons and they're excited about them and they're engaged in them and that 00:01:12.132 --> 00:01:16.932 often means taking it out of the classroom, out of a textbook and bringing it to life. 00:01:16.932 --> 00:01:21.012 One lesson I taught where we try to use maths in a real life context. 00:01:21.003 --> 00:01:25.903 was a lesson where we told the children that the petrol was going to run out in Cambridge 00:01:25.903 --> 00:01:30.283 and we played them a very realistic video clip which explained to them about how the 00:01:30.283 --> 00:01:35.003 petrol was getting very low and by the end of the day there would be hardly anything left. 00:01:35.003 --> 00:01:38.863 And without prompting and without me saying this is a maths lesson or without giving them 00:01:38.863 --> 00:01:41.263 anything apart from that context they made 00:01:41.254 --> 00:01:47.334 tally charts, they created bar charts, they got maps out and they measured distances to 00:01:47.334 --> 00:01:51.214 see where people lived, to see if people had gone the same routes home and suddenly they 00:01:51.214 --> 00:01:55.594 were taking the skills that they probably didn't even realise they were learning in 00:01:55.594 --> 00:02:01.514 some of our maths lessons and applying them to this context in a very real way. I think 00:02:01.505 --> 00:02:07.585 There is a danger sometimes that we can go too far down that route and of course creativity should be at the forefront of our curriculum. 00:02:08.325 --> 00:02:21.665 But there's a real balance to be had because they do need to have those skills and there's no point in me explaining big dramatic concepts where they have a chance to apply all these reasoning and problem solving skills if actually they don't have the very basic understanding. 00:02:21.756 --> 00:02:27.636 of number. These first crucial years of academic study of the subject can shape the rest of 00:02:27.636 --> 00:02:33.216 our lives as learners. It's really easy to be pigeonholed at a very young age into someone 00:02:33.216 --> 00:02:37.116 who's good at maths and someone who's good at English. And right now if you said to me, 00:02:37.116 --> 00:02:40.296 who are your strong writers in the class, I can tell you. Who are your good mathematicians, 00:02:40.296 --> 00:02:42.016 I can tell you. But I don't. 00:02:42.007 --> 00:02:46.147 don't want that to be something that they go off into secondary school thinking. That's 00:02:46.147 --> 00:02:49.547 really hard to avoid. 00:02:49.547 --> 00:02:54.687 And the transition into secondary education sees maths blossom into a subject that today 00:02:54.687 --> 00:02:56.787 is truly cross-curricular. 00:02:56.787 --> 00:03:02.267 We start in year seven doing very simple things, looking at the very simplest mathematical relationship 00:03:02.257 --> 00:03:03.917 which is proportional. 00:03:03.917 --> 00:03:06.357 So we find a string stretches one centimeter 00:03:06.357 --> 00:03:09.717 with one newton, two centimeters with two newtons. 00:03:09.717 --> 00:03:11.537 You can say, okay, we want the string 00:03:11.537 --> 00:03:13.097 to stretch five centimeters, 00:03:13.097 --> 00:03:15.317 and straight away the students will intuitively 00:03:15.317 --> 00:03:16.917 tell you that's five newtons. 00:03:16.917 --> 00:03:20.877 Every student who can count can do that sort of math. 00:03:20.877 --> 00:03:22.517 As teachers, we need to be 00:03:22.508 --> 00:03:26.948 producing children who are confident and who believe that they can do maths and 00:03:26.948 --> 00:03:32.888 the more we get maths embedded into other subjects and the more children can 00:03:32.888 --> 00:03:38.168 practice it and feel secure in their learning then then that's surely a good 00:03:38.168 --> 00:03:42.768 thing. The actual examples we might do in a physics exam wouldn't necessarily be 00:03:42.759 --> 00:03:47.259 exactly the same as real life but the principles of being exact and getting 00:03:47.259 --> 00:03:51.519 the right answer are what really matter. So for example you wouldn't get into an 00:03:51.519 --> 00:03:55.239 aeroplane if the pilot has said yeah we've got roughly the right amount of 00:03:55.239 --> 00:03:58.839 fuel for this journey. You wouldn't want to drive over a bridge where the 00:03:58.839 --> 00:04:03.019 engineer has said yeah I'll probably take a lorry. It needs to have been done exactly. 00:04:03.010 --> 00:04:06.850 That's what science is all about, is getting this idea that we can be exact, 00:04:06.990 --> 00:04:09.610 we can look at the numbers, we can get the right equation, 00:04:09.710 --> 00:04:11.890 and we can make a prediction, and that prediction will hold. 00:04:12.150 --> 00:04:14.770 And even a complicated university-level formula 00:04:14.770 --> 00:04:17.870 can be reduced to just adding and multiplying. 00:04:19.010 --> 00:04:23.110 Most of the maths in our everyday lives today is taken care of by computationalists. 00:04:23.261 --> 00:04:28.461 At the start of my time here I would come up with a problem. 00:04:28.461 --> 00:04:33.721 I might teach a series of lessons on one skill, teaching some basic programming. 00:04:33.721 --> 00:04:37.881 But over time I've found that students, young children in general, have become very adept 00:04:37.881 --> 00:04:43.501 at using computer technology, tablets, the portable computers, the iPads, the iPhones. 00:04:43.512 --> 00:04:47.912 But in fact, if they want to go one step further and look at how they begin to pioneer that 00:04:47.912 --> 00:04:53.332 technology as they grow up, how do they create rather than just consume the technology that 00:04:53.332 --> 00:04:56.792 they're using, then it's really important that they have an understanding of what basis 00:04:56.792 --> 00:04:58.512 those models are made on. 00:04:58.512 --> 00:05:03.772 And as they journey into higher education, students will need to have 00:05:03.762 --> 00:05:06.602 mastered at least some mathematics. 00:05:06.602 --> 00:05:11.062 One of the things that I always wanted my students to do is to think of maths as problem 00:05:11.062 --> 00:05:18.722 solving. And if they know maths is a problem, you can go in, see what is there, search for 00:05:18.722 --> 00:05:24.022 a solution and get out, then they'll deal with life in a similar way. And in the 00:05:24.013 --> 00:05:27.513 In that sense, maths is rich indeed. 00:05:27.513 --> 00:05:31.913 Whether you go to university or whether you go straight out into work, 00:05:31.913 --> 00:05:36.113 everybody's going to need to understand a mortgage deal or a credit card deal. 00:05:36.113 --> 00:05:40.573 Everybody is going to have to be able to work out whether they're being charged the right amount 00:05:40.573 --> 00:05:44.273 for food in a restaurant or work out your percentage discount in a second. 00:05:44.264 --> 00:05:48.264 So financial literacy is hugely important. 00:05:48.264 --> 00:05:55.264 Not every student I teach is going to want to go on and do a degree in maths or a maths-related degree. 00:05:55.264 --> 00:05:59.264 And so for them the great satisfaction is in getting things right. 00:05:59.264 --> 00:06:04.524 Especially in getting things right that they previously thought they wouldn't be able to get right. 00:06:04.515 --> 00:06:11.215 I think employers want people to be happy using numbers and to have a feel for numbers. 00:06:11.215 --> 00:06:17.155 To be able to, in a quick meeting or sales pitch, to be able to quickly do a rough calculation 00:06:17.155 --> 00:06:22.715 and say, OK, if you use this this many times, this many places, it will give you this much. 00:06:22.715 --> 00:06:24.775 You may not have to be exact. You can go and be exact with a good idea. 00:06:24.766 --> 00:06:29.986 a calculator and a spreadsheet in your own time. You won't be able to in real time make 00:06:29.986 --> 00:06:32.646 a case for something without a feel for it. 00:06:32.646 --> 00:06:39.486 Our children should go to society appreciating maths on an economic level because economy 00:06:39.486 --> 00:06:45.026 is very important, technology is very important. These depend on maths in my opinion. 00:06:45.017 --> 00:06:51.517 book, whether we talk about finances or we talk about accountancy or anything. If you 00:06:51.517 --> 00:06:56.417 don't have the basics of numeracy, you'll never be able to do these things. 00:06:56.417 --> 00:07:00.817 I don't think anyone's going to argue that making sure that children leave primary school 00:07:00.817 --> 00:07:05.257 with the basic knowledge of the four operations, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and 00:07:05.267 --> 00:07:09.607 division of course that is vitally important and it's the building blocks for the rest 00:07:09.607 --> 00:07:14.927 of their education. But to me, apart from that, it's the skills really that are the 00:07:14.927 --> 00:07:16.267 most important thing. 00:07:16.267 --> 00:07:22.147 Society has always defended or excused people saying, I'm not very good at maths, I'm not 00:07:22.147 --> 00:07:25.527 very good at computers, it's not what I do, in a way that they would never 00:07:25.518 --> 00:07:29.518 never excuse people saying that they were illiterate or unable to read. 00:07:29.518 --> 00:07:33.138 Do I think you can get away without a solid mathematical knowledge? 00:07:33.138 --> 00:07:36.278 You can probably muddle by, but I think your life is poorer for it.