Years ago I lived next to an artist. We often talked about our two disciplines, visual arts and math, and decided that in both cases creativity stemmed from the same drive: delight in patterns, joy in solving problems, and general curiosity and open-mindedness.
Turns out we were right. Also, STEAM has now become a thing, that’s STEM with an A in Arts, although in Australia, the emphasis is still mostly on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).
We certainly need a skilled STEM workforce if we want to participate in a clean energy and digital world. The problem is that we are not attracting enough students. According to the Australian Department for Education, Skills and Employment (DESE), the number of Year 11 and 12 students studying STEM has stagnated at around 10%. A recent report put the US figure at 20%, also a worrying low.
Because math underpins so much of STEM, one response to these disturbing numbers is a greater emphasis in math education on calculation and utility rather than beauty and creativity.
Math it is Incredibly useful: Supports everything from weather reports and GPS to bridges, buildings, cars and planes, from the Internet and mobile phones to our supply chains, banking, medical techniques and much more. However, the president of the Australian Mathematical Society, Ole Warnaar, reported in the Society report Gazette last year on member comments regarding the proposed revisions to the Australian Mathematics Curriculum, and a key concern was its overly utilitarian approach.
Because math underpins so much of STEM, one response to these disturbing numbers is a greater emphasis in math education on calculation and utility rather than beauty and creativity.
Warnaar is certainly supportive of teaching students to apply mathematics in useful ways, but he also laments that in our curricula, both current and interim, “not enough effort has been made to try to convey the intrinsic beauty of mathematics and the enjoyment that one has in it.” can derive from learning and understanding. new mathematical concepts.
“Not enough effort has been put into trying to convey the intrinsic beauty of mathematics and the enjoyment one can derive from learning and understanding new mathematical concepts.”
Ole Warnaar, President of the Australian Mathematical Society
I agree. To begin with, in the historical development of mathematics, the desire to solve practical problems and the desire to explore logic, patterns, and curiosity-driven inquiry for their own sake often went hand in hand, inspiring each other. I am also concerned that an overemphasis on utility could blind students to the ethical and other issues associated with technology, such as its ownership and scope, and its political role as a supposed panacea for climate change and growth for growth. – For the good of the economy.
Even on a purely practical, STEM-focused level, with an overly utilitarian curriculum, students are likely to see mathematics as a bewildering black box of tools, rather than a creative and empowering language that can help them innovate in the field. chosen field. Half of our students no longer like math, compared to 38% internationally, yet we also have one of the highest proportions of out-of-field math and science teaching in the world.
In Victoria, and it is a similar picture across Australia, the UK, the US and elsewhere, fewer than 10% of Year 12 students studied the most advanced maths subject in 2019; just under a third studied intermediate-level math, and nearly two-thirds took a general math course that does not include calculus. Boys outnumbered girls in all three subjects, and the gap widened to a ratio of nearly two to one in higher math.
The gap is even larger for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, who have STEM degrees at a tenth of the rate of non-Indigenous people of working age, according to Australia’s 2020 report. STEM Workforce Report; for women, the figure is a third compared to men.
Of course, an obvious question is, does it matter if few students study the more advanced mathematics in Year 12?
Most research-based universities, including the Group of Eight in Australia and Oxford in the UK, expect students to do well in at least the second most advanced mathematical subject if they want to pursue degrees such as biomedicine, commerce, science, engineering. and computer science. Universities have had to respond to the downward trend in students taking advanced math (and physics) by offering refresher courses, but this comes at the expense of taking other courses that deepen knowledge and engagement with the course. So there are good work-related reasons to choose advanced math (and science) in high school.
Additionally, advanced mathematics also offers the greatest scope for intellectual challenge and satisfaction. If you know how to read it, a fancy proof or a beautiful and meaningful equation can be just as impressive as a beautiful piece of art or music.
In this context, I am reminded of a recent study that suggested that one of the reasons fewer girls are choosing STEM careers is that, while they generally perform as well as boys in math and science, they perform better than boys in the humanities. Which suggests that we could attract more girls if we embrace STEAM and include the beauty, history and intellectual delight of the subject in our math instruction.
Offering a wide range of math subjects is important, and not only to prepare students for STEM careers, but also to navigate today’s increasingly complex world.
Trying to game the ATAR system is another apparent reason why students are increasingly choosing the easier math and avoiding physics. Tellingly, Estonian schools, whose students performed well in mathematics in recent PISA rankings (2018), have virtually no “high-stakes” tests. The PISA methodology is disputed, but it is interesting that Estonia ranked first in mathematics after China, Singapore, Japan and Korea, and these five are countries with significantly technology-based economies. Australia was ranked 29th, just behind New Zealand and Portugal, and just ahead of the US, which apparently manages to maintain its technological lead only because its high-level education is so good.
Designing the best curricula for the diverse range of students who take maths in year 12 is a tall order. Not everyone cares about technology, business, or other practical applications, and not everyone cares about “fancy” and “beauty”. Still, the role of education is to foster engagement with new ideas, and the challenge for educators is to strike the right balance. Clearly, it is important to offer a wide range of mathematical subjects, and not only to prepare students for STEM careers, but also to navigate today’s increasingly complex world.
We saw this during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the media broke big stories about the exponential growth rates and spread of the virus, and we all eagerly awaited the latest update on the mathematical model of the pandemic.
We also saw how ignorance of statistics fueled anti-vaccine claims about hospital admissions that were simply wrong.
Ease with this type of basic data analysis is also important for understanding the effects of climate change. Relatively few students will play significant roles in discovering solutions to this and other pressing problems, although many will help implement them. But we all need to know how to interpret the data on key issues, so that we can make informed decisions in our lives and in our politics.
All of this begs the question of whether or not some form of math should be compulsory in high school, such as English. Some countries have already taken this step, including Estonia, Sweden, Japan, Finland, Korea, Taiwan, and Russia. New South Wales plans to make maths compulsory by 2024, while from 2023, Victoria will encourage more students by offering a second, more basic general maths subject in Year 12.
New South Wales plans to make maths compulsory by 2024, while from 2023, Victoria will encourage more students by offering a second, more basic general maths subject in Year 12.
Around 80% of Australian Year 12 students already take a maths subject, and I fear that making it compulsory could backfire if we don’t up our game in terms of funding schools, teacher salaries and training, and if we don’t address inappropriate cultural attitudes toward math, such as “math is too hard” or “boys are better at math.” Then there’s “we’ll never use this stuff, so what’s the point?”, something students rarely say about English or the arts.
We must solve these problems, because mathematics should play as important an educational role as English. Both topics are about how to use language to think carefully and critically. Both are also about building a rich and enabling vocabulary, whether it be expressing our feelings, putting together logical arguments, making sound financial decisions, or understanding the number terms needed to engage in and interpret informed research in medicine, technology, the environment. . , and other aspects of daily life.
There are similarities even at a literary level, such as understanding how to make and decipher metaphors. In the study of gravity, for example, it is a deeper (and more relevant) experience to understand the inverse square law as a metaphor rather than just a memorized formula, and more delicacies such as multifaceted metaphors of the wave equation and gravitomagnetism. On the contrary, it says a lot about our culture that English curricula rarely include literary mathematics and scientific writing in their selected texts. Our magazines and newspapers do not usually review this genre either. Looks like we really need STEAM! And I bet we’ll be richer, individually and as a country, because of a culture that understands and embraces math instead of fearing it.