South Africa's shocking mathematics performance

I have worked as a computer programmer for over 36 years - all in commercial environments - municipal, retail and financial - and I have never needed to use any maths beyond the simple operations (+-*/). Sometimes powers and roots for finance. I believe the NEED for pure maths is highly over-rated. The vast majority of careers (say95%) would never need anything beyond what Maths Literacy teaches. It is true that mathematically inclined people are often capable programmers - but that doesn't prove anything.
 
"One of the points we found was a problem in Maths and Science. It was Verwoerd who made the subjects difficult because he thought blacks would be a threat to him."
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- Senzo Mchunu, MEC for Education in Kwazulu-Natal



"What is happening today is what Verwoerd did, where the black majority were historically not given education. We are dealing with a system that had put black people back for centuries."
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- President Jacob Zuma on his governments' failure to deliver text books



‘Today, in 2012, I did not expect that the ‘liberation party [the ANC] would want to further Verwoerd's goals: to keep the black child poor, uneducated and deprived."
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- Redi Tlhabi, who interviewed Zuma on Talk Radio 702



"The monumental failure in South Africa was not Hendrik Verwoerd's fault but that of the current government".
"Children under apartheid's ‘gutter education' were better educated than children are today."
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- Mamphela Ramphele, a product of Bantu education and a previous UCT Vice-Chancellor



Amnesty International campaign,
1.PNG
 
Flywheel said:
Bill Gates actually funded this ****.

mynorthwest.com

Rantz: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation bankrolls 'math is racist' lunacy - MyNorthwest.com

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is bankrolling a group of activists who believe math is racist and focusing on the "right answer" is white supremacy.
mynorthwest.com mynorthwest.com
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Interesting read.

Article has an accurate assessment on the racist toolkit to help educators:

Math is different for students of color​

A core belief of the toolkit is that students of color interpret and use math differently than white students. If you teach students of color the “right” way to do math, you are reinforcing white supremacy culture.

Ironically, the text itself is wildly racist. It treats all minority students as somehow inferior to white students, claiming they’re not capable of understanding the correct way to learn math.
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I browsed thru the toolkit and it seems to be thin on facts and just a document to promote racism.

Seems just like the kind of material that ZA Department of Basic Education would adopt (see OBE of an example of adoption).
 
Pythonista said:
I have worked as a computer programmer for over 36 years - all in commercial environments - municipal, retail and financial - and I have never needed to use any maths beyond the simple operations (+-*/). Sometimes powers and roots for finance. I believe the NEED for pure maths is highly over-rated. The vast majority of careers (say95%) would never need anything beyond what Maths Literacy teaches. It is true that mathematically inclined people are often capable programmers - but that doesn't prove anything.
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Try doing robotics, ML, AI or the other disciplines punted by 4IR, without math.
 
system32 said:
Interesting read.

Article has an accurate assessment on the racist toolkit to help educators:


I browsed thru the toolkit and it seems to be thin on facts and just a document to promote racism.

Seems just like the kind of material that ZA Department of Basic Education would adopt (see OBE of an example of adoption).
Click to expand...


There may be no more pass laws and restrictions on employment now, but the ANC is keeping Apartheid alive and well with their racist policies and illogical utterances.
 
Pythonista said:
I have worked as a computer programmer for over 36 years - all in commercial environments - municipal, retail and financial - and I have never needed to use any maths beyond the simple operations (+-*/). Sometimes powers and roots for finance. I believe the NEED for pure maths is highly over-rated. The vast majority of careers (say95%) would never need anything beyond what Maths Literacy teaches. It is true that mathematically inclined people are often capable programmers - but that doesn't prove anything.
Click to expand...

One of the core functions of pure math is to promote abstract thought. You can significantly improve your coding by learning pure mathematics even at undergraduate level. This is also where Applied Math comes in.
 
ponder said:
- Senzo Mchunu, MEC for Education in Kwazulu-Natal




- President Jacob Zuma on his governments' failure to deliver text books




- Redi Tlhabi, who interviewed Zuma on Talk Radio 702




- Mamphela Ramphele, a product of Bantu education and a previous UCT Vice-Chancellor



Amnesty International campaign,
View attachment 1025756
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You gotta admit, Verwoerd was a confident and good looking guy. Just look at him.
 
Pythonista said:
I have worked as a computer programmer for over 36 years - all in commercial environments - municipal, retail and financial - and I have never needed to use any maths beyond the simple operations (+-*/). Sometimes powers and roots for finance. I believe the NEED for pure maths is highly over-rated. The vast majority of careers (say95%) would never need anything beyond what Maths Literacy teaches. It is true that mathematically inclined people are often capable programmers - but that doesn't prove anything.
Click to expand...

I actually think math's literacy is a wonderful subject. Most people that did pure maths in school don't know how compound interest etc works, where it is explicitly taught to you in math lit. And a few other real world math need in there. Most people won't be technically inclined and you have to equip them for the real world.

Polymathic said:
I used to A-B student in maths right up to Grade 9 but struggled with Maths beyond that point. and scraped passed in Matric. If anything the teaching methodology in Maths in schools favors people who are naturally inclined to the subject. I had to do 2 stats module in university and a lot of it had to do with concepts I struggled with in school the difference is that this time I was actually thought the concepts which seemed really simple, so simple that I eventually passed with over 75%

Thinking back, the pace that we went through the syllabus was dictated by the A students and everybody else had to catch on their own time.
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I actually thought it was dictated by the C students, but I agree with you that it felt like it was taught wrong. Put stuff in the sausage machine and get things out. Most math teachers don't even know things that they should - then you get answers like that is what it is - just use this formula.
 
phoneJunky said:
I actually think math's literacy is a wonderful subject. Most people that did pure maths in school don't know how compound interest etc works, where it is explicitly taught to you in math lit.
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We did that in std7 math.
 
phoneJunky said:
I actually think math's literacy is a wonderful subject. Most people that did pure maths in school don't know how compound interest etc works, where it is explicitly taught to you in math lit. And a few other real world math need in there. Most people won't be technically inclined and you have to equip them for the real world.



I actually thought it was dictated by the C students, but I agree with you that it felt like it was taught wrong. Put stuff in the sausage machine and get things out. Most math teachers don't even know things that they should - then you get answers like that is what it is - just use this formula.
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My maths class had nearly a dozen definite distinction candidates and it seemed like the teacher was there to maximize the amount distinctions from the class.
 
phoneJunky said:
Most math teachers don't even know things that they should
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Some know the topic well but are not good at teaching it to others. I had some extra lessons with a retired professor and the guy was useless at teaching as far as I was concerned.
 
Pythonista said:
I have worked as a computer programmer for over 36 years - all in commercial environments - municipal, retail and financial - and I have never needed to use any maths beyond the simple operations (+-*/). Sometimes powers and roots for finance. I believe the NEED for pure maths is highly over-rated. The vast majority of careers (say95%) would never need anything beyond what Maths Literacy teaches. It is true that mathematically inclined people are often capable programmers - but that doesn't prove anything.
Click to expand...

That's entirely dependent on what software you write.

What if you're a developer for the NCSA? The computer science involved in the fields of science and engineering is heavily math dependent. These days guys writing some financial software or asp.net application considers themselves as being computer scientists. :ROFL:
 
ponder said:
We did that in std7 math.
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If I recall correctly, we did in std7 accounting. Even if we did it in math, it would just be to put it through the sausage machine. Math Lit really does it quite nicely, using some really nice real world type scenarios.
 
Moosedrool said:
That's entirely dependent on what software you write.

What if you're a developer for the NCSA? The computer science involved in the fields of science and engineering is heavily math dependent. These days guys writing some financial software or asp.net application considers themselves as being computer scientists. :ROFL:
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At a braai once this guy mentioned he was a programmer, when prompted he said he makes websites (i checked later and they weren't fancy/complex ones) and asked me if I did any programming to which I replied not really the only thing I'm good at is assembly language on a few architectures, his response 'what's assembly?'
 
phoneJunky said:
If I recall correctly, we did in std7 accounting. Even if we did it in math, it would just be to put it through the sausage machine. Math Lit really does it quite nicely, using some really nice real world type scenarios.
Click to expand...

It was in accounting as well.
 
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