What were you good - and bad - at in school?

[captain nemo1701]

Good: science, English
Bad: hated being forced to play football in sh*te weather

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

Dissent, music and running. Forging my mum's signature for the homework book. Earning a school report that opened with the (unforgettable for me) words: '[Marmoset] has spent a sixth form career fraught with idleness and insouciance...''

 

[steveindenmark]

I was good at fishing and cross country but was useless at lessons.

 

[slowmotion]

The only thing that has stuck with me in all those years of studying Latin is an obscure paragraph in Kennedy's Shorter Latin Primer.

Zeugma

Here's an example

" She went home in a temper and a sedan chair"

 

[swansonj]

If you were educated in England & Wales, it was until very recently a very unusual developed country in that the %s doing Maths after 16 or 'advanced' maths after 16 are some of the worst in the developed world. It was shockingly low. One of the consequences of this is there is an entire generation of teachers/academics that have already been through this academic system that also haven't done maths after 16 and don't have a rounded picture. There's nothing particularly difficult about some university or A-level ideas, it's just children in primary or secondary school on the whole aren't introduced to them. The lack of immersion in these wider ideas leads to circularity where it's only done at A-level or degree formally so people/media bang on about it being harder. A completely different way of looking at what you said is you had teachers who didn't have a good grounding in the subject and didn't expose you to wider areas. Imagine how different a world it would be if a third of people doing A-levels did A-level Maths or even 100% who wanted to go to university.

You are absolutely right that there is a viscious circle of people being bad at maths because they are taught by people who are bad at maths. But you run a slight risk of distracting from the source of the problem by focussing on the A level/university stage. Try observing a typical primary school maths lesson taught by a typical primary school teacher. She will have a phobia about maths - a lack of underlying empathy with how numbers fit together, a lack of confidence that it will all work, a lack in joy in her own approach - and that will communicate itself to the 5 year olds, the 6 year olds etc. And they will go on to be primary school teachers themselves, communicating, because they can't help it, to yet another generation that maths is hard and the best you can hope is that if you follow some rules someone has given you, you might just, if you are lucky, get the right answer.

 

[raleighnut]

You are absolutely right that there is a viscious circle of people being bad at maths because they are taught by people who are bad at maths. But you run a slight risk of distracting from the source of the problem by focussing on the A level/university stage. Try observing a typical primary school maths lesson taught by a typical primary school teacher. She will have a phobia about maths - a lack of underlying empathy with how numbers fit together, a lack of confidence that it will all work, a lack in joy in her own approach - and that will communicate itself to the 5 year olds, the 6 year olds etc. And they will go on to be primary school teachers themselves, communicating, because they can't help it, to yet another generation that maths is hard and the best you can hope is that if you follow some rules someone has given you, you might just, if you are lucky, get the right answer.

Think yourself lucky, when I was in junior school a lot of 'Maths' was adding up and subtracting money, then they turned round and said to forget all that, we're going decimal.

 

[User10119]

You are absolutely right that there is a viscious circle of people being bad at maths because they are taught by people who are bad at maths. But you run a slight risk of distracting from the source of the problem by focussing on the A level/university stage. Try observing a typical primary school maths lesson taught by a typical primary school teacher. She will have a phobia about maths - a lack of underlying empathy with how numbers fit together, a lack of confidence that it will all work, a lack in joy in her own approach - and that will communicate itself to the 5 year olds, the 6 year olds etc. And they will go on to be primary school teachers themselves, communicating, because they can't help it, to yet another generation that maths is hard and the best you can hope is that if you follow some rules someone has given you, you might just, if you are lucky, get the right answer.

I'm not sure that's as universal as you make it sound. Most of the primary teachers (of whatever gender) that I know and work with are pretty enthusiastic about maths. Less so about the nonsense SPaG stuff that is going on...

 

[marinyork]

You are absolutely right that there is a viscious circle of people being bad at maths because they are taught by people who are bad at maths. But you run a slight risk of distracting from the source of the problem by focussing on the A level/university stage. Try observing a typical primary school maths lesson taught by a typical primary school teacher. She will have a phobia about maths - a lack of underlying empathy with how numbers fit together, a lack of confidence that it will all work, a lack in joy in her own approach - and that will communicate itself to the 5 year olds, the 6 year olds etc. And they will go on to be primary school teachers themselves, communicating, because they can't help it, to yet another generation that maths is hard and the best you can hope is that if you follow some rules someone has given you, you might just, if you are lucky, get the right answer.

I'm not focusing on A-levels. I said teacher/academic. I even said primary and secondary school. Many schools don't have sixth forms (in theory academies have offerings up to age 19 which is more theoretical so things have improved slightly), so again I'm not really focusing on A-levels. I mentioned the media because that one is a very important one, yes there are these days some dedicated great programmes on the BBC, but watching the news and other programmes it's very clear to me that the same thing goes on where people who haven't done maths 16 are broadcasting these views. You have parents as well. There's no reason why complex numbers can't be introduced in primary school to take the above example, when talking about extensions of number systems.

When you go to an elite university it has a very high percentage of private school pupils, talk to a lot of them and you realise how ridiculous our system is, in private schools yes we're talking secondary, money is thrown their way. A lot of middle of the road or even plodders are even entered in some of the early modules for AS-level and some even complete. Similarly you meet lots of international students and their systems are totally different. Then you meet Chinese students and talk about the gaokao and it's interesting contrasting us at one end and China at the totally opposite end of how things are done.

If you had a child that said oh I think the English civil war is interesting, a teacher or parent wouldn't say well sorry you've probably got to wait for university to study that, they'd say watch this programme, or look up this book or this on-line. You wouldn't have people recounting stories of yeah it was such a large step up, all throughout school I'd been told about Kings and Queens and never told about this other stuff, a country without a King, my God, I was wtf. I just really struggled with the concept, it made my mind melt.

If I had wanted to have a rant about A-level I'd have probably gone on about the latest part of the chain of decline whereby recent A-level Maths only covers 5/6ths of what it did even before that due to the merger of P1-3 into C1-4 leaving only two other modules on A-level. This resulted in universities being a lot more pushy about wanting A-level Further Maths, which isn't taught at many sites, further making the problem even worse.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

Geography, English, Economics, Statistics, Drama, 5000m and 10000m running and rugby and debating/arguing were my fortes whilst football, foreign languages, art, science, pure maths, and being sociable were my weaknesses. Careers teacher suggested I should get a job as a baggage handler at Gatwick.

I went to secondary as a "grade A" top-of-the-class student with no interest in sport and, due to stuff that went on outside school, and at year of bullying in it, declined the whole time and left as a very averagely academically able guy who preferred physical activity to the cerebral. Maybe I just peaked too soon?

 

[Flick of the Elbow]

If only my parents had been able to send me to a decent school instead of the local underperforming comprehensive. I think the worst thing about the school was the complete absence of any teaching or even awareness of soft skills, the social skills that are so crucial to most well paid jobs. I did ok academically but as soon as I started work I was immediately seen as just an 'also ran' while the ones with the good networking skills and the ability to say the right things to the right people were immediately on a fast track career path. I've never overcome that handicap and now it's too late.

 

[marinyork]

What soft skills are these? I hear employers banging on about them all the time but very wary to pin them down a bit more.

What private schools 'teach' on the other hand...

 

[Accy cyclist]

I got an A grade O Level in English language(whatever they're called now i don't know) and an unclassified in the maths O Level.

I was useless at football, but pretty good at sprinting and 400 meters. This fellow copied my technique,i like to think!


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WddUT4awBy8

Pretty good at art too,but useless at metal and woodwork.

 

[midlife]

I got an A grade O Level in English language(whatever they're called now i don't know) and an unclassified in the maths O Level.

I was useless at football, but pretty good at sprinting and 400 meters. This fellow copied my technique,i like to think!


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WddUT4awBy8

Pretty good at art too,but useless at metal and woodwork.

Is that when he opened his legs and showed his class to the crowds......thank you Mr Coleman

 

[EltonFrog]

I loathed every moment of secondary school, I loathed the lessons, the teachers, and all but three of the other kids, and of those three that were friends at school, I never saw them again once I left. Every opportunity I played truant, and went to extraordinary lengths to do so, I have no fond memories of school at all.

My last day at school was the first day of exams, I walked into the hall of my science exam along all the desks about to sit down and thought "phuque it" and turned around and walked out never to return. I went straight to my Saturday job and asked him to give me a full time job. I started work the next day at £7.25 a week.

When "Friends Re-United" was a thing, I signed on and there wasn't anyone of any interest on it all and most of the kids were fat losers in dead end jobs or unemployed or in prison. The disinterested teachers were dead and good feckin riddance to them too. Twunts.

 

[tyred]

It is twenty years since I left secondary school. I think my secondary school has a reunion event for all school leavers 25 years after they started so I may get an invite in the post to mine some day soon. I have no desire to go whatsoever. Out of all the people in my year, there may be only one or two I'd be interested in meeting again and I know the only teacher I actually liked is dead.