Theo - Get Your Sums Right!

Posted for John Murphy - Headmaster & Maths Teacher.

Apparently Theo Paphitis (Dragon's Den and former Chairman of Millwall, millionaire etc) was on Newsnight with Paxman, asking the question why do we need to teach Maths in school! He said all his workers knew their times tables, so what more do they need? The obvious reply is that we are teaching problem solving skills, that we use a lot more GCSE maths in our jobs than we think, and also learning at school is not just for getting a job it's also about broadening our horizons. Then I began to think a bit deeper and realised that if we stopped teaching Maths as he proposes then the logical conclusion eventually would be that we wouldn't have enough people with the necessary skills to invent new stuff like the internet, mobile phones, and whatever the next thing is that is about to come out. The progress of technology would grind to a halt and eventually we would run out of people who could service the technology etc. We would actually start going backwards. He needs to realise that all these great innovations were discovered/invented by mathematicians who sat in classrooms just like we all sat in and were inspired to do something great. So Theo, you have a lot to thank mathematicians for and you should be spending some of your millions trying to educate people instead of treating them like idiots and let them do complicated maths if for no other reason because it's there!