Rishi Sunak Maths Evangelist

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Rishi Sunak no stranger to losing billions has come up with the salvation for the economy
We must cherish maths more We cannot provide a love of maths though by teaching it We must embrace it wholly with our hearts and minds

And if the economy fails it will be because we did not have enough love for maths

The bland Sunak has shown evangelical charisma by not being weird like Johnson or Truss
the very characteristic/excuse guaranteed to bring the voters back to toryism

[SqueakyVoice]

Rish! didn't lose loads of money, he married it.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/apr/17/parliament-watchdog-opens-investigation-into-rishi-sunak

Rishi Sunak faces further questions over his family’s financial interests after a standards investigation was launched into a potential breach of transparency rules relating to his links to a childcare firm in which his wife is an investor.

His current maths is
Wife share holdings in childcare cos
 + Childcare bosses appearing after he was questioned in the select cmmt (re a "pilotted scheme")
= Either zero interest or zero transparency
Just depends on how many significant figures are used by his still to be appointed adviser.

[ProfessorDavey]

Rishi Sunak no stranger to losing billions has come up with the salvation for the economy
We must cherish maths more We cannot provide a love of maths though by teaching it We must embrace it wholly with our hearts and minds

And if the economy fails it will be because we did not have enough love for maths

The bland Sunak has shown evangelical charisma by not being weird like Johnson or Truss
the very characteristic/excuse guaranteed to bring the voters back to toryism

I have very little time for Sunak, but I do agree that we need a much greater level of maths literacy. And part of this is cultural - while people would be mortified if someone claimed to be 'rubbish' at reading or writing, it seems to be almost a badge of honour amongst too many people to claim that they are rubbish at maths. It is as if it doesn't matter and I think this is partly because too many of our media, politicians and general celebrities are from an arts/humanities/law background. Hence we get a kind of default assumption that people find science hard/boring, while literature is super interesting. Sure there are people who find science difficult and/or boring but there are also plenty who find it fascinating and much easier than, for example, learning a foreign language.

Of course Sunak's plans are non-sense - if you can't get enough properly qualified maths teachers now, how much harder will it be if all 16-18 year old had to study maths.

[Nearly Sane]

I have very little time for Sunak, but I do agree that we need a much greater level of maths literacy. And part of this is cultural - while people would be mortified if someone claimed to be 'rubbish' at reading or writing, it seems to be almost a badge of honour amongst too many people to claim that they are rubbish at maths. It is as if it doesn't matter and I think this is partly because too many of our media, politicians and general celebrities are from an arts/humanities/law background. Hence we get a kind of default assumption that people find science hard/boring, while literature is super interesting. Sure there are people who find science difficult and/or boring but there are also plenty who find it fascinating and much easier than, for example, learning a foreign language.

Of course Sunak's plans are non-sense - if you can't get enough properly qualified maths teachers now, how much harder will it be if all 16-18 year old had to study maths.

Do they really? You might want to give evidence for your assertions.

[SqueakyVoice]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/apr/17/that-most-pressing-of-uks-problems-for-sunak-to-solve-maths
Worth a read.

His wife’s shareholding in Infosys was currently tanking by 9.4%. Or in cash terms, his family was £49m poorer than it had been that morning....,
...the internal logic – the maths – of his own argument began to fall apart. It wasn’t the fact that so many pupils stopped studying maths at 16 and didn’t get the chance to do A-level that was the problem. It was that at least a third of students didn’t pass GCSE maths. You don’t conquer people’s fear of maths by making them study for an extra two years......Then Barclay was also struggling with percentages – 54% of nurses voting to reject a pay offer was a narrow margin. But when 52% of the country had voted for Brexit it had been the overwhelming will of the people. Go figure.

[ProfessorDavey]

Do they really? You might want to give evidence for your assertions.

Blimey, where to start.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/shortcuts/2018/sep/12/british-people-often-boast-about-being-bad-at-maths-heres-why-that-causes-genuine-harm
https://www.nationalnumeracy.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/attitudes_towards_maths/attitudes_towards_maths_-_updated_branding.pdf
https://www.thenational.scot/news/18304294.people-proud-bad-maths/
http://whs-blogs.co.uk/teaching/socially-acceptable-say-im-bad-maths/
https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/being-bad-maths-shouldnt-be-badge-honour

And just in Today's Times - op ed piece by well known journalist in which he talks about his joy at dropping maths so he could study another 'easy' humanities subject. And the front cover of the Times2 section:

"This pupil has A-level maths, a first in PPE at Oxford, an MBA from Stanford. All right for him ... So we really need to be maths nerds like Rishi?"

Completely unthinkable to have an equivalent 'literacy' headline, e.g.

"This pupil has A-level English, a first in Classics at Oxford, a postgraduate degree from Stanford. All right for him ... So we really need to be reading nerds like ***?" (*** = any number of high profile journalists, politicians, writers etc)

And the Times2 has an article which emphasises how long standing this snobbery against STEM subjects is:

"It was CP Snow who kicked it off. In 1959 the physicist and novelist gave a speech that even to this day defines the debate about the arts versus the sciences.

Many times, Snow said in his famous Two Cultures lecture, he had been in the presence of supposedly “highly educated” people who were laughing at the artistic ignorance of scientists. Yet, he lamented, if he asked them basic questions — the scientific equivalent of “can you read?” — they would not only be unable to answer, but would be almost proud of the fact."

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Blimey, where to start.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/shortcuts/2018/sep/12/british-people-often-boast-about-being-bad-at-maths-heres-why-that-causes-genuine-harm
https://www.nationalnumeracy.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/attitudes_towards_maths/attitudes_towards_maths_-_updated_branding.pdf
https://www.thenational.scot/news/18304294.people-proud-bad-maths/
http://whs-blogs.co.uk/teaching/socially-acceptable-say-im-bad-maths/
https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/being-bad-maths-shouldnt-be-badge-honour

And just in Today's Times - op ed piece by well known journalist in which he talks about his joy at dropping maths so he could study another 'easy' humanities subject. And the front cover of the Times2 section:

"This pupil has A-level maths, a first in PPE at Oxford, an MBA from Stanford. All right for him ... So we really need to be maths nerds like Rishi?"

Completely unthinkable to have an equivalent 'literacy' headline, e.g.

"This pupil has A-level English, a first in Classics at Oxford, a postgraduate degree from Stanford. All right for him ... So we really need to be reading nerds like ***?" (*** = any number of high profile journalists, politicians, writers etc)

And the Times2 has an article which emphasises how long standing this snobbery against STEM subjects is:

"It was CP Snow who kicked it off. In 1959 the physicist and novelist gave a speech that even to this day defines the debate about the arts versus the sciences.

Many times, Snow said in his famous Two Cultures lecture, he had been in the presence of supposedly “highly educated” people who were laughing at the artistic ignorance of scientists. Yet, he lamented, if he asked them basic questions — the scientific equivalent of “can you read?” — they would not only be unable to answer, but would be almost proud of the fact."

And yet he must know that the non voting and voting English public being duffers is an essential prerequisite for continued tory government

[ProfessorDavey]

Do they really? You might want to give evidence for your assertions.

Something else that irritates me when listening to programmes on, for example, radio 4 is the difference in the expected 'base' level of knowledge between science and arts/humanities topics.

So any discussion that relates to DNA is typically caveated by 'the blueprint of life' or the 'genetic code for life' etc etc - a kind of presumption that people won't know what DNA is unless they are spoonfed that information. You never hear a discussion about Shakespeare caveated 'the famous Elizabethan playwright and poet' - there is a default assumption that everyone knows who Shakespeare is, but not what DNA is!