Diane Abbott and Numeracy Shaming

Last week, almost as soon as the starting gun been fired for the commencement of the 2017 general election campaign, the media and proletariat revelled in collective schadenfreude as they enjoyed the first major gaffe of the attempted Labour fightback. In a radio interview for LBC, Diane Abbott (the honourable member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington) claimed that a Labour government would recruit 10000 extra police officers at a total cost of £300000. Nick Ferrari immediately asks her to clarify - "What are you paying them?" - and the following few minutes, as she attempts to dig herself out of this hole, are very difficult to listen to. If you are brave enough, you can do so by clicking here.

Ferrari bemused by Abbott.

It is clear that, on this particular question, the shadow home secretary was abysmally briefed. She panicked. She tried on the spot to undertake some mental arithmetic but got lost in a sea of shifting place values. This is an occupational hazard for politicians and you can almost hear the resignation in her voice as the interview unravels.

Diane Abbott is a divisive politician (maybe it's because she's black - maybe it's because she's a woman - maybe it's both - I don't know) so the response on social media was inevitable. I wish to confront a selection of them in this post because a number of the jokes focused on numeracy. The deduction that her mathematics must be substandard seems, at first, reasonable:

25(7+5) will do it

Thank you, Mr Brexit. Very droll!

63rd April is actually 2nd June is it not?

Even Aunty Beeb waded in.

Here's a fact: Diane Abbott is incredibly intelligent. She went up to Cambridge University having studied at a state school where her History teacher discouraged her from applying lest it "give her ambitions outside her social station". I'm sure her numeracy is just fine and, in any case, this isn't really a post about an individual; an experienced politician quite capable of brushing off any mud slung in her direction. This is a post about my dismay at the speed at which Brits are willing to belittle others' apparent lack of mathematical comfort.

National Numeracy is a charity that was founded in 2012 to promote numeracy among adults and children in the UK. Their report, Attitudes Towards Maths, summarises some of the challenges it faces: "It is culturally acceptable in the UK to be negative about maths, in a way that we don’t talk about other life skills. We hear ‘I can’t do maths’ so often it doesn’t seem a strange thing to say.[...] We talk about maths as though it is a genetic gift possessed only by a rare few, and inaccessible to the general public."

If this is true then many of those enjoying the Diane Abbott memes are rank hypocrites. Would we happily admit we struggle with maths while eagerly castigating someone else's failure to reason arithmetically under pressure? Either that or we are competent with numeracy ourselves and happy to laugh at someone less capable - this is bullying, obviously. I see the latter occasionally at school; if one student makes a mental slip some others, who have thought of the correct answer, might groan or worse. I am always careful to calmly stamp out this behaviour and it is not very difficult to explain why this is necessary.

According to National Numeracy, one of the three causes for negative attitudes towards maths is anxiety: "Maths makes some people feel anxious, leading them to avoid situations where they may have to use mathematics." If we leap on people's arithmetic blunders it isn't likely to help anyone. As a teacher I am often frustrated by students' lack of willingness to attempt a hard question because they can't immediately see the path to a solution. They are quick to say, "I can't do it" before having made a single mark on the page. This indicates low confidence.

Good mathematicians are willing to make mistakes and spend time reasoning their way into cul-de-sacs. They can do this because they are not worried about reaching a solution immediately and, besides, some of the apparent dead-ends might turn out to be interesting. If you are new to a neighbourhood, you will become far more familiar with it by following your nose and wandering around than you would armed with a knowledge of your destination's postcode and a smartphone. There is an enormous difference between knowledge and information. We can only develop the former with some fearless exploration.

So, by all means, hold politicians to account. It is, after all, part of the job of an MP to deliver responses on message and convince the populace of their potential to govern. Numeracy shaming, however, is not something I can stomach. It compounds the cultural problem we have in this country: It is apparently nerdy to be good at maths and shameful to be bad at maths. Maths is shrouded in negativity whichever way you lean.

I would like to applaud Diane Abbott for having a go. She was in a tight corner and it would have been easy, as so many politicians do, to say, "Well I don't have those figures with me". Instead, she tried to compute an estimate there and then. She misjudged it spectacularly, yes, but in doing so will have improved her mathematical ability.

from matheminutes http://ift.tt/2p9MEqm

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