Most Math teaching is functionally useless

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What’s the point of learning maths? For some it reveals the beauty of underlying patterns in the world. But for most of us the point of maths is to help deal with real-life problems – something maths teaching today signally fails to do. You bone up on trigonometry yet seldom encounter it again once you’ve left school. You can get a top grade and still end up financially illiterate. Indeed, it turns out that almost half of UK working-age adults have the numeracy skills of a primary school child. A teacher is meant to prepare young people to be responsible citizens, but if they don’t learn the basics of compound interest, how can they make informed decisions about, say, renting or buying a flat?

That’s why Bobby Seagull, writing in the Financial Times, advocates ridding ourselves of the “If Alice has three times as many sweets as Billy…” variety of sums and start asking pupils to compare the merits of bank accounts mortgages etc. Only then will they be able to acquire the “survival skills” needed for adult life. (edited version of an article by Bobby Seagull, Financial Times).

I would add: mental arithmetic. One should be able to do simple adding, subtracting and multiplication in your head. You are being charged 8 pounds for 13 gizmos. Mentally check that the supplier is charging you correctly. Right answer 104. Of course, you can use a calculator or a cellphone, but doing it in your head, and quickly, even approximately, saves time and is an essential skill, an aid to peace of mind.

What went wrong for the Left?

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All across the developed world, mainstream centre-left parties are in decline. In France, the Netherlands and Greece, they have ceased to be even remotely relevant. In countries like Ireland and Italy, they have been replaced by left-wing populist movements- Sinn Fein and M5S respectively. In France and to a lesser extent Spain, they have been replaced by centrist, pro-EU parties. Even in the best-cases, such as Portugal and Sweden, the centre-left governs in fractious coalitions with more left-wing parties. There are several reasons for this, which I will explain. But apart from in countries like the US and the UK, where the voting system and political culture only allows for two viable national parties, I think the fate of the international centre-left is all but sealed.

To a very large extent, the decline of the left is result of the declining economic performance of the developed world. After WW2, most developed countries adopted the mixed economy, where private enterprise was permitted but highly regulated and the government controlled large swathes of the economy to achieve strategic aims and provide a comprehensive social insurance system. Although there have been some market-orientated reforms to the mixed economy in recent years, the overall structure of the economy has stayed the same. The problem is that in the 21st century, and particularly since the 2008 crash, the mixed economy has failed to provide for the needs of the masses. Wage growth is virtually stagnant, inequality is generally increasing, and the national welfare systems seem powerless to protect the working class against the might of international capital and the forces of globalised free trade. The traditional welfare state can no longer offer people the social security it once could, particularly as an ageing population is making welfare increasingly expensive and unsustainable.

The social democratic parties of Europe have traditionally relied on the support of the working class. But over time, the relative size of the working class has shrunk, and a vast proportion of people now consider themselves middle class. This has been caused by a decline in traditional manufacturing and agricultural jobs, and an increase in professional jobs that require a degree. These well-heeled professionals don’t feel the allegiance to the centre-left their working class parents would have done. Alongside the decline of the working class numerically has been the decline of working class culture. Trade unions, working man’s clubs and small-town pubs and community centres have all diminished. As a result, the centre-left no longer has a visceral appeal to the working class, who increasingly identify with either the soft patriotism of the centre-right, or the overt nationalism of the far-right.

Mostly importantly, there is a three-way division of those who used to support the quintessential centre-left policy programme. First are those who believe the current manifestation of the social market economy is insufficient to protect the working class against the global wealthy elite. Therefore, far more radical and overtly leftist measures are necessary. Amongst these modern socialists include Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn, France’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and Greece’s Alexis Tsipras. Their supporters are diverse: they include young people who feel pessimistic and economically insecure, working class people who feel the brunt of automation and casual labour, and a disproportionate number of ethnic minorities, especially Muslims.

The second group are those who still believe in centre-left economics, but are much more passionate in their belief in internationalism, and in particular, the European Union. They strongly reject any notion of embracing nationalism and isolationism to win back disaffected working class former centre-left voters, preferring to focus on winning young professionals and middle-aged moderates. These people include Britain’s Liberal Democrats, Spain’s Citizens, and Macron in France. They are the most passionately pro-immigration of the three groups, yet they aren’t as popular with ethnic minorities as the leftist radicals; they have a reputation for being almost entirely white and middle class.

The third and perhaps the most interesting group are those who agree with the principles of the mixed economy, but vehemently reject the internationalism and free-trade ideas the centre-left has adopted more recently. They now vote for parties like Poland’s Law and Justice, Hungary’s Fidesz, or France’s Front National, who combine social democratic ideas like child tax credits and generous pensions with a nationalist approach to migration, law and order, and the EU. They tend to be working class, but are older and more nostalgic for a time when their status in society was greater and countries could act more independently.

My point is that the decline of the developed world’s economic performance, the decline of the working class, and the increasing divisions in what should be the centre-left’s natural supporters, mean that centre-left parties are increasingly outdated, and there is virtually nothing that can be done to reverse that trend. The only way our nations can thrive in a post-social democratic era is if our political systems allow for these new divisions to be represented fairly and proportionately. Trying to shut people down, or to downplay the salience of the centre-left’s fracturing, will only lead to disaster.

Britain saves the EU from falling apart!

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It may sound crazy, but “Brexit has saved the EU”. Think about it. After the 2016 referendum, many sensible people thought Britain’s departure would spark a “stampede” out of the bloc. Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders schemed to duplicate the result in France and the Netherlands. Donald Trump’s promises of a “glorious” UK-US trade deal convinced many Europeans that the grass might really be greener. Yet now it has become dispiritingly clear that “Brexit will be a failure”. Both sides are largely agreed that whatever path we take – soft Brexit, no-deal Brexit or no Brexit – will lead to national “humiliation” and make Britons’ lives worse. Across the Channel this has not gone unnoticed. Support for the EU around the continent is at its highest since 1983, and talk of the bloc falling apart has all but vanished. Even the populists have been “quietly dropping” the promise of an EU exit from their manifestos. Indeed, the chaos of Brexit has probably helped stem the populist tide by highlighting the fact that the thing populists do best is sloganeering”. Whatever you feel about the EU, the Brits have shown that you can’t leave it. (Simon Kuper, Financial Times)

The EU was always going to make it difficult to leave. Of course. So why did the Brexiters fail to study the problem in depth and do their homework? Maybe because their emotions trumped everything. As far as I know nobody worked out the technicalities. Thus they are left with masses of egg on their faces: “Oh, we didn’t think of that! We didn’t think of unharvested farm produce, the Irish border, Gibraltar, long lines of trucks waiting all day in Calais, the effect on the pound sterling, the lack of interest overseas in special trade deals with the UK, flight of the banks”….One could go on, but I won’t. Brexit is a betrayal of the country by lazy-minded, incompetent politicians far too close to Putin and Russia for comfort. Yes, they will shift the blame (they are experts at that) but it is they who are solely responsible for the upcoming disaster.

Thought for the day

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Unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old.”. (G.K. Chesterton, quoted in The Sunday Times)

Was he thinking of the Constitution, liberal democracy, the rule of law, international treaties and cooperation, universities as promoters of critical thinking (not just job training), and financial services as servants, not masters, of the people? If so, he was prescient.

Why fraudulent news travels fastest

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False news travels much faster online than the truth because of our craving for novelty. In the largest-ever study of how news spreads on social media, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology analysed 126,000 stories on Twitter from between 2006 and 2017. They found that false stories were 70% more likely to be retweeted than those that were true. True stories took six-times longer, on average, to reach an audience of 1,500 people.

One surprise was that automated robots – or bots – played no part in this discrepancy. “False news spreads more than the truth because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it,” said the authors of the study, published in the journal Science. They concluded that the high visibility of false stories is not necessarily the result of malign intent: fake news is popular simply because people find it more surprising, intriguing or reassuring than the truth. “False news is novel, and people are more likely to share novel information,” said co-author Professor Sinan Aral. (The Week. 24 March 2018)

Aside from a small number of people paid by the oil companies to counter the facts, the scientific community wholeheartedly agree that the muck poured into the air over nearly 300 years since the start of the industrial revolution accounts for the rapidly warming world environment. This is arguably the greatest single threat to mankind and its future on the planet, and it will affect every living soul. And yet there is a substantial body of non-scientists who not only don’t believe in the cause of man- made climate change but are actually wrecking efforts to counter it. It must be reassuring to hear politicians and special interests on social media claim the change is natural because then you don’t have to actually do anything, in particular spend money. It is convenient to deny the facts, even if, in doing so, you’ll be wrecking the future of your children and grandchildren.

I write from Southern England, which has had the hottest summer I can ever remember, and no rain to mention. You have to live in la-la land to believe this is a normal weather fluctuation, but, of course, it is convenient to do so. Selfishness rules.