Matric maths scrapped at 300 schools

Old news is old?

Doubt this will happen long term though, especially since from what I've read elsewhere it has finally dawned upon them that maths is a crucial part of education.
 
Why was it done in the first place by the way?
 
many of us still agree... its coz the math teachers in most schools dont look like that :)
 
Interesting article. It has some very good points, some of them I can agree on.
 
Its very simple. Schools want good pass rates so they would rather push pupils into Maths literacy where they are more likely to pass, even if it is not in the best interests of the students.
 
Honestly I don't get this any more, you're not forced to do maths at school and why should you? You do the required subjects and maybe a couple extras and you excel but when you apply to study medicine you get the big FU cause you don't meet the quota.

When students without maths can just go overseas to places like China and study medicine without maths.

The other thing is, being good at maths doesn't mean you can teach it, teaching is a skill and not many teachers have it.

Remember these are public schools, if you don't have the numbers for maths it's gonna be scrapped, you can't have a maths teacher in a school with only 10 learners doing maths.

I think cause this is a tech forum there's this emphasis on maths but there's other careers out there that don't require maths as a requirement like law.
 
DA-LION-619 said:
Honestly I don't get this any more, you're not forced to do maths at school and why should you?
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To survive in the modern world?

South African students matriculate with maths literacy. Meanwhile Estonian kids learn programming (compulsory) at seven years old.

A few years later said SA kid competes against said Estonian kid for the same job in some random country. Naturally the outcome is a massacre...

DA-LION-619 said:
there's other careers out there that don't require maths as a requirement like law.
Click to expand...
Its used as a proxy to measuring reasoning ability so you're pretty much screwed without it unless you want to do a BA degree.
 
HavocXphere said:
To survive in the modern world?

South African students matriculate with maths literacy. Meanwhile Estonian kids learn programming (compulsory) at seven years old.

A few years later said SA kid competes against said Estonian kid for the same job in some random country. Naturally the outcome is a massacre...
Click to expand...

To your understanding what is maths literacy?
 
Mathematic ability is important not only in every career but in every aspect of modern life. People who don't think they need maths are the same ones who often struggle with simple logic. I see it every day in totally different occupations
 
DA-LION-619 said:
To your understanding what is maths literacy?
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The new name for standard grade maths...

Due to the unique circumstances at my school people doing add math and SG math were combined into one class later on....worst class ever....the add math guys were building paper planes while the SG math guys couldn't keep up with the (slow) pace. I've spent some time in a European school and thus know that their idea of "standard" is equal to our "higher grade / add math". Anything short of SA maths (i.e. non-literacy) has zero chance of competing on an international scale unless AA somehow spreads globally.
 
In this globalised world and the increase in service based economies, its not just the people in your town that you are competing with but the rest of the world. Good mathematical skills are base essentials for a country or most of the services will be outsourced internationally.

Maths literacy need to be scrapped as a subject, as its a sorry excuse for a subject.
 
Maths literacy cannot be compared to standard grade maths. That's like comparing s 56k modem to 512k adsl.
 
HavocXphere said:
The new name for standard grade maths...
Click to expand...

No it's far worse than that... When I was at school SG math was for the thickies... Math lit is for people that can barely wipe their own arse.

I'm sure there's a matric paper or two floating around online. Questions are literally along the lines of "If Paul has 10 apples and Jane has 5 apples then Paul gives Jane 2 apples how many apples does Paul have? (you may use a calculator)"
 
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