Do the maths or pay the price: SA’s numeracy crisis

As teaching aids go, the metallic silver BMW M3 I was using to help my wife teach a maths literacy class was a head-turner. Her Grade 11 pupils oohed and aahed and got the obligatory selfies with the car.

The wows got even bigger when I asked one of them to sit in the driver’s seat, call up the trip computer and give me a fuel consumption readout. That took a bit of prompting.

Then I got another girl to use my laptop to go to the BMW online site and find out the size of the M3’s fuel tank.

Here’s the problem girls: How far can you go with a full tank at the current consumption?

For many, I could have just swanned down the steps of an alien spaceship in a glittering silver cape.

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They pecked away at their calculators and one, bouncing up and down, put her hand in the air, “3.95 sir!”

I broke it to her gently that 3.95km was less than the distance to the nearby shops – and that on those 63 litres of fuel, an entire Formula One grid would cover that distance.

This wasn’t a case, though, of it being an unfair question to people who were not petrolheads.

This was asking to do some simple arithmetic.

And, to be fair, she had the numerals correct – but the decimal point was, wrongly, two places to the left.

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Mistakes are part of life, but what did shock me a bit was that the pupil who answered seemed to have no idea of size and space – which would have told her that no normal car would go through a tank of fuel in less than four kilometres.

What I learned from this episode – and a few others when I used exotic test cars to help teach lessons on speed and distance, as well as running costs for a car – was that many of the pupils at our schools have a shockingly bad grounding in mathematics.

That is why I believe the introduction of maths literacy – which provides skills to navigate daily life – was so important.

However, it gave me more food for thought again this week when I read the department of education – which has been crowing about its wonderful matric pass rate in recent weeks – revealed that mathematics (the top tier) passes have been going down, as have distinctions.

I was shocked, though, by the fact that less than 2% of candidates get distinctions in the subject. There is a similarly dismal performance in science and technical subjects.

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Without a proper foundation in the principles of arithmetic – and mathematics, including geometry – our kids are starting from behind in the ultra-competitive and tech-dominated modern world.

But, the lack of number skills means something far more ominous for society as a whole.

Numeracy is the basis for logic and people who are unable to think logically are easily lied to and led down whatever charlatan garden path a scammer wants to lead them.

Logic and paying attention in science classes, even at the lowest level, would mean people would not be the gullible sheep (that’s the word they like to use against those who are guided by facts and science), who are easy pickings for conspiracy theorists and grifters.

I wouldn’t then have to see the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party of earnest posts that I saw on Facebook this week, warning that “they” are “changing the weather” and “poisoning the skies”.

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In the world of maths illiterates, 1+1 does equal 3.

Sadly, though, then your children die from measles because you believe conspiracy rather than science.