Rishi Sunak’s maths bias is so Indian – and Chinese
- The first non-white British prime minister wants to reform public maths education, no doubt to the cheers of BN(O) parents, but he may be fixing the one system that isn’t completely broken in the UK
As a child in Hong Kong, I was at the bottom of my maths class in school, among other subjects. But when I reached Form Three in secondary school, my family moved to Canada. Joining the Canadian system at Grade 9, I suddenly became the maths genius in class. Quite simply, Hong Kong taught and still teaches much more advanced maths beginning on the first day of primary school, relative to the British and North American systems, and focuses much more on memorisation, especially of the multiplication table.
Perhaps that was why Chinese used to be stereotypically perceived to be good at maths overseas, when collectively as a people, we most definitely are not. That perception is changing, though, after a few generations of ethnic Chinese university graduates working at Starbucks.
Progressive educators, however, prefer understanding over memorisation. Well, who doesn’t? But whenever I have had to exchange foreign currencies while travelling or do an online stock trade, boy, am I glad I remember my multiplications and fractions.
I would not venture an opinion on which system is better. However, Rishi Sunak, the first non-white to become Britain’s prime minister, clearly thinks the British system produces too many mathematically illiterate graduates, and he has made it his mission to change that. In a major policy speech, he said he wanted all pupils to study maths until the age of 18, rather than the current 16. Does that mean they all have to take (GCE) A-level maths? Horror of horrors!
No doubt many BN(O) parents who have emigrated to Britain would agree with his assessment. Many have complained in online forums about British school maths being too easy and a waste of time. They needn’t worry. By the time of A-levels leading to university, the maths syllabus and examination are pretty much the same between Hong Kong and Britain. So children of BN(O)ers better enjoy the easy ride while they can. It won’t last forever, as I found out in my last year of high school in Canada, even though it doesn’t follow the British system.
However, I wonder whether the Indian heritage of Sunak, who has called his proposed maths education policy “a passion project”, might have something to do with it.
He said too many of the country’s children were being “let down” by leaving school without proper numeracy skills for the workplace.
“This is personal for me,” he said. Of course, this is the guy who recently asked a homeless man whether he worked in finance and wanted to become a banker. The prime minister used to work at Goldman Sachs. Not every Briton aspires to the same career path.
Over the years, I have come across many Chinese and Indians, especially those of the middle class and with university degrees, who look on with disdain at Anglo-American maths education, however much they otherwise admire the countries where they have settled down with their families.
One reason is that parents from both countries have an unnatural tendency to equate being good in school with being good at maths; and that being good in school gets you a career head start. Well, perhaps the last generation anyway. My wife and I, both being terrible at maths, have no such obsession for our children.
But I suspect Sunak’s parents, a doctor and a pharmacist, are likely to share this maths bias, which has been passed on to their son. It’s hard to imagine a traditional white prime minister being too worried about the numeracy of publicly educated youngsters.
Is that a good thing though? Personally, I rather prefer the British system over Hong Kong’s. Why devote so much public resources – and inflict torture on countless young children – when many of them would have little use for the maths being taught? Yes, in their future workplace!
