The problem is that once you're on maths lit, that is it for you. The government do not allow you to "upgrade" to the higher grade exam, regardless of how many extra lessons you attend, or your abilities. My youngest sister was subjected to this ridiculous rule which only exists to bolster their stats. She passed maths lit with 90% and mentioned that the questions pertained to identifying shapes correctly, calculating how many apples you would have if someone took some out of your basket, and what your interest payments on a simple loan would be.
That is a pathetic standard of education. These are skills that pre-teens possess, or at least should. I find the notion of maths literacy to be farcical at best. They simply re-frame existing skills that a kid already possesses into a subject of its own in order to address the poor mathematics results, and that is not how you solve a problem, so to speak. More maths literacy matriculants entering the "real world" will result in more of this kind of logic, and that is not a standard worth working towards.
This is one of these situations where a "back in my day" argument holds merit. I just about failed maths in Standard 9 and had a swift kick up my arse by my folks thereafter. I applied myself a little and eventually matriculated with a distinction in maths. I honestly believe that much of what is attributed to inability with these kids is simply them being lazy kids, and the parents not giving a schit. You cannot blame the teachers if the kids nor their parents have the inclination to learn, or the willingness to discipline or incentivise their kids to do so.
As long as parents hold the attitude that "well I hardly use any of the maths I learned at school therefore maths lit makes sense" this sort of problem will perpetuate. It's not simply about learning quadratic equations and applying them in your chosen field - it helps to frame your constructs of reasoning later in life as well. Personally, I'm able to calculate the volume of my pool thanks to school mathematics. I'm able to understand why an internal rate of return calculation is pivotal to my business(es) thanks to school maths. I'm able to accurately forecast my financial statements thanks to school maths (and accounting). More importantly I'm able to understand why these things are pertinent too.
Maths literacy assumes that the child taking it is a complete moron who will never contribute to society in any meaningful manner, apart from paying taxes, although they'll struggle to calculate these taxes in the first place, because questions in their school exams relating to percentages were static and isolated - there was no such thing as a scaled calculation.
Our education system should be empowering the kids with the ability to be whatever and whoever they want to be in their careers. It shouldn't make negative assumptions about them beforehand and limit them later on in life, particularly in their university choices. It shouldn't assume that 50% of the matriculants will be street sweepers, bag packers and ANC MECs. It also shouldn't assume that non-native-English speakers will struggle with concepts because of language barriers. If that were true we should all be fluent in Latin in order to pass maths and English.
The entire principle of the literacy grade and reducing standards of examinations is ludicrous. If you want to succeed at making the future of SA a prosperous one, you start at the ground-roots level, by increasing the standard of education supplied, not decreasing the benchmarks and examination levels. It really irks me that this sort of mentality is bandied about as something to be proud of, as that thoughtleader blog attempts to...
