By Andy Chu, University of Technology Sydney
Mathematics has been a passion of mine ever since I was a kid. It is relevant to every aspect of life. So it was sad to see fellow students who would struggle or were disheartened by the subject that I thoroughly enjoyed throughout my schooling life. I will preface this by saying I graduated in 2012 at a high school in the south west of Sydney. So though I’ve been out of school for 4 years now which would make me less understanding of the current schooling environment, I would like to recount my experiences about this issue on the lowering uptake of students undertaking intermediate mathematics and beyond.
My passion for mathematics led to a translation in academic performance. I was lucky to be in the top class at my school which had very quality teachers leading them (shout out to Dr. Simonian, Mr. Dimassi and Mrs. Canales). In year 11, I recall there being only one 2U class and the rest were general mathematics. The following year, a few would drop down to general mathematics or completely drop mathematics. I feel that this low uptake is an accumulation of poor mathematics experiences in the earlier years of high school, possibly even earlier. What maths class felt to me was essentially learning a new concept and doing stock questions from a textbook every period for all of high school. Mathematics should not be a monotonous grind of learning new concepts and repeating 15 uninspiring questions. Given a limited amount of time to learn such a wide breadth of content, it’s either keep up and move on or struggle and move on.
Though this seems the more efficient way to each, it doesn’t seem too effective. Surely there can be way to spruce up the subject to make it more fun and inspiring to learn. Where are our Bunsen burners? Where are our creative writing sections? Where are our geography field trips? Now I’m not an expert in secondary education and this short blog isn’t designed to solve these issues, just to continue the dialogue, but I think the way to having an engaging mathematics syllabus is one that focuses on building a solid mathematical foundation, empowering the student to take ownership of learning and having material that is made interesting to learn. If that was there supported by the staff during my high school years, it would’ve mathematics a great deal more fun for me and hopefully that of my fellow peers.
Andy Chu was one of the recipients of a 2015/16 AMSI Vacation Research Scholarship.