Editorial-July 7, 2014
Students who fail mathematics and science at the GCE O/L examination should not be written off as failures; for, they have the potential to blossom out later in life if properly guided and provided with opportunities, Minister of Youth Affairs and Skills Development Dullas Alahapperuma has said, stressing the importance of vocational training. He has also questioned the wisdom of requiring a person to be adept at mathematic to teach subjects like history.
The GCE O/L mathematics failure rate remains as high as 42.77% or, in other words, about 112,000 students fail that subject annually.
Opinion may be divided on Minister Alahapperuma’s views on mathematics. However, one cannot but agree with him on what he has said about politicians and their educational qualifications. Mathematical proficiency is, he has said, essential for ordinary people to secure even lower-rung jobs in the state sector, but nobody asks politicians whether they are good in mathematics before they are elected to Parliament to handle public finance and make vital decisions on the national economy.
Minister Alahapperuma has proved that the breed of politicians capable of turning the searchlight inwards is not extinct. Never mind mathematics! Some parliamentarians are not even conversant with basic economic terms though they are entrusted with fiduciary responsibilities. Once, challenged by an Opposition MP, in a TV interview, to define real income, a Cabinet minister who did not know what it was, to cover up his ignorance, launched into a tirade of abuse. That may be the reason why most MPs skip the committee stages of budget debates or come out with loads of baloney in their speeches replete with risqué and, in some cases, even raw filth.
A few years ago lawmakers sank their differences and joined forces in a rare moment of unity in Parliament to heckle a UNP MP who questioned the educational qualifications of a rival in the House. He stressed the need for parliamentarians to have a decent education amidst booing.
Following the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) hedging scam, the then Chief Justice Sarath N Silva, said, in open court, that his peon had better educational qualifications than a pacie turned CPC Chairman. The same is true of our politicians. Failures are the pillars of our Parliament, Provincial Councils and Local Government institutions where we have representatives with Schwarzenegger’s brawn and kindergarten tots’ brains. However, the fact remains that politicians may not know their mathematics, but they are calculating enough to dupe the masses into voting them into office.
It looks as if we were not alone in this situation. An article lined up for tomorrow’s Midweek Review contains an interesting comment on an embarrassing situation British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, MP got into, during a recent TV interview where he was asked by a child what seven times eight was. The MP ducked the question, as could be seen from a video which has gone viral on the Internet, and made a hames of it in the process by claiming he did not field mathematical questions in interviews! He was left with egg on his face when he was told by the child concerned that the answer was 56! Someone may try to console Osborne, perhaps, still reeling from the times table fiasco by quoting Einstein, who said: "Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater."
As for Minister Alahapperuma’s lament that children who fail mathematics are generally considered failures, there is nothing wrong with our students’ perceptive abilities or the unfairly hated mathematics; the problem, we reckon, is with the way that interesting subject described as the poetry of logical ideas is taught in school.
Unless steps are taken urgently to make learning mathematics as well as science real fun and help children improve their performance in that subject at public examinations we will continue to lag behind the rest of the world; we might as well forget about our ambitious goal of becoming the Knowledge Hub of Asia!
