More Maths, Anyone?

Wake up, Australia, we’re being left behind in the education stakes.

My long-ago jobs as a high school maths teacher and country risk analyst in a major bank have sensitised me to the issues raised in yesterday’s report by the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA). ACOLA says that Australia lacks a sense of national urgency around science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) performance, in contrast to some of our closest competitors. The ACOLA findings were taken up by Julie Hare’s article in today’s Australian newspaper – Make Kids Study Maths, Science – and by today's broadcast on the ABC's 'The World Today' - Academics call for urgent improvements to maths and science education.

It’s not just maths and science where we are falling short of our Asian neighbours and where we have a very long performance tail. In Hong Kong, my four young Anglo-Australian grandchildren (two sets of twins) have been receiving a very impressive education from the age of 18 months. Yes, 18 months. I've observed their classes during my many visits to Hong Kong. For sure, as small toddlers they joined a glorified playgroup, but it provided formal tuition, with weekly hours of attendance increasing as age milestones were reached.

It's taken for granted that children in Hong Kong should be able to write their own given name by the age of three years. Based solely on classroom experiences, with no extra tuition at home, here's my granddaughter's efforts with writing - a letter she sent me just before her fourth birthday.

Here's her younger, slightly-dyslexic brother's efforts with writing a sequence of numbers just before he turned five.

Right from the start, all their classes have been taught by two teachers, one speaking English and the other speaking Mandarin, and the older twins, just turned seven, can now read and write many characters and follow Mandarin-language children’s programmes on TV with ease.

So, 'go Gonski', and any & every other form of support for education. It's the key to our nation’s productivity and future prosperity.

Education has always been dear to my heart. I was once a high school mathematics teacher at South Dubbo and Barrenjoey High Schools in NSW and ever since I’ve maintained a strong interest, mostly voluntary, in community education. As a volunteer I helped establish the Cameragal Montessori School at North Sydney and ran the Scecgs Redlands Adult Education Centre at Cremorne; I was a long term volunteer with the Australian Institute of Export’s training programmes and then Executive Director of the College of International Business in Melbourne. In the mid 1990s I worked as a consultant to the Chancellor of Swinburne University of Technology and was a member of Swinburne's Board of TAFE. My community education focus resulted in several publications, including a story on Ockham's Razor (ABC) in 1991 and the book 'Brainboxes' in 1994.

It goes without saying that my five family history books continue that decades-long interest in community education. And in a writing genre full of boring 'output', I like to think (kid myself?) that my family histories are all the better for my early mathematical training in structure, reasoning and logic. That rigorous thinking style helps me to cull extraneous detail and pare down to the essential information and storyline needed by readers.

So, 'go maths', it's never wasted.