Long, long ago, Dear Readers, when you were little children, Uncle Marty submitted an FOI …
Long-time readers may remember back to 2021 and the farce of Why Maths Must Change, the idiotic open letter signed by AAMT and MERGA and ATSIMA and “AAS” and, most egregiously and most absurdly, “AMSI”,1 in support of ACARA’s still-then-invisible draft mathematics curriculum. Readers can learn about and/or refresh their memories of this farce here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Although ACARA was nowhere mentioned in WMMC, it smelled as if ACARA were involved and a few but a few too many months later, I submitted an FOI to ACARA. I requested information on WMMC, including “any emails to and/or from and/or between ACARA officers related to [WMMC]”. I won.
Well, no; I lost. We all lost. The earth may be patient, but this ox was very slow and the earth was not that patient. Whatever dodgy benefit ACARA and its cronies gained from WMMC, they gained it, and the release of documents over four years later in no manner negates their win. Still, I won the FOI, which may have its value.
In March, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, to whom I appealed after ACARA refused to release many emails, handed down their decision; the OAIC determined that I should get pretty much everything; ACARA declined to appeal and I received the copies of the requested documents in April, embedded below along with a tidied subset.2 I doubt that anyone much now cares, but it makes for very interesting reading, at least for me.
The documents that were released by ACARA were various drafts of WMMC and various email threads including or within ACARA, on the drafting of WMMC, the efforts to sign groups on and the efforts to obtain favourable media coverage of the statement; the amalgamation of these documents is the embedded PDF, below (in the form in which it was sent to me). The drafts amount to minor tinkering and are of no particular interest.3 The email threads, which are of interest, at least to me, are a bit of a mess in the way that such threads usually are: many email bodies are repeated many times in subsequent replies. I may write a second post, about what I see as interesting in the release, and in the FOI battle and the OAIC decision.4 We’ll see. Perhaps, if there is any discussion on this post, enough of the sense will emerge to not bother.
Below, also, is my tidied version of the emails, in (approximately) chronological order. I have not deliberately left anything out or otherwise gamed the presentation. I have also not deleted any names.5 In general, I work extremely hard, arguably too hard, to not mention individuals by name, excepting CEOs and others of such stature. In this case, it feels reasonable and proper to have included the names.6
1) As the linked posts make clear, “AAS” was signed on by some education nitwits within AAS, rather than the AAS fellows or any committee properly representing them. The case of “AMSI” was similar but worse.
2) Yes, I am aware that it is now June – ε. I have been busy.
3) ACARA provided the drafts to me in 2022. While the drafts were and are of no interest, the table also provided in 2022, which itemised the related emails, was definitely of interest, providing strong hints of the full release now received. I wrote about it here.
4) I think there are significant, mostly good, implications for any future FOI battles.
5) Some names and identifying details have been redacted by ACARA, with my and/or OAIC’s agreement.
6. My including names below in no manner licenses commenters to pile on in a vicious or reckless manner. Watch your comments.
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THE FULL FOI DOCUMENT
THE EMAILS
I have not included attached and transcribed drafts and articles. For context, see the released version of WMMC, the newspaper stories on WMMC, here and here (M,P), and my posts on these stories, here and here and here.
11 MARCH
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12 MARCH
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15 MARCH
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16 MARCH
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1 APRIL
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11 APRIL
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13 APRIL
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14 APRIL
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The WMMC operates on the premiss that the product (skills and competencies) are all of what matters with the subtext that the students must score well on various measurements. However, learning mathematics has to be seen as going beyond these to address that mastery involves a process of increasing understanding over time where students become familiar with its structures and reasoning processes. A lot of pupils do not do well i think because they are not really engaged; a lot of what goes on in many classes is essentially rote, perpetrated at a lower level that traditional teaching which at least did impart some skills.
Good teaching involves teachers drawing on their own interest and experience in a subject and imparting it to the kids, and this is where reform has to begin — in the formation of teachers, giving them mathematical problems and investigations to explore and discuss, and talking about things that can be brought into the classroom from everyday experiences of children, interesting puzzles and games, mathematical “candy” that excites their curiosity that exploits the characteristics of the kids in front of them. Part of the deal is to get kids to pay attention to what is going on — checking answers, being aware and able to exploit patters, looking for alternative approaches to problems.
Part of the situation is what goes on at professional meetings of teachers. Are the presentations from acting teachers themselves who talk about the mathematics that interests them and what they have found useful in their classes, or by people who want to fill their cvs and peddle one or other pedagogical flavour of the day?
WMMC is idiotic in three separate ways. Fundamentally, WMMC is arguing for an emphasis on real world “problem” crap. Secondly, WMMC is written appallingly. Thirdly, WMMC was incoherently in support of a then-invisible draft curriculum, but without wanting to acknowledge it was written by insiders who had been major parties to the drafting.
But all that is irrelevant to this post. This post is about the fact that WMMC was a scheme to provide support for ACARA’s draft curriculum, but that ACARA was very central to this scheme, and then hid their involvement.
The current rendition of what amounts to “real world problems” is artificial and performative. Before about 1960, the real-world goals of the syllabus were pretty straightforward: provide the children with the arithmetic and basic algebra (e.g. formulas) that allow them to carry on the commercial transactions of everyday life — computational skills, ratio and proportion (including fractions and percentages), interest, weights & measures. That sort of thing. Life was much simpler.
Modern citizens have to negotiate much more. Financial instruments are much more complex; gambling is much more pervasive; information is presented in various formats; medical preparations and procedures are subject to testing and
validation; mathematical models are discussed with respect to such things as economic behaviour, climate change, ecology; political representation and election procedure raise issues with a mathematical edge. These are things that should be occupying a considerable amount of time at school; otherwise people are sitting ducks for charlatans and ignorami purveying all sorts of mis- and dis-information, clever and deceptive marketing, having deleterious effects politically , socially and healthwise. The trick is to cover the essence of this in a way that leads to some understanding of the issues without getting too much into the weeds. Some attempt has been done with statistics at the school level, but the effect seems to be to give a glancing attention to terminology.
I have found that if you start with something in the news with students — say a debate on ways of electing members of parliament or proportional representation in a legislature — they will begin to grasp some of the issues involved and some of the dilemmas that policymakers face. The tale of assigning seats in the US House of Representatives is quite an interesting one.
Other subjects can carry part of the load for the mathematical syllabus, such as geography, civics and quantitative science (physics and chemistry). You can even press literature into service — Clifton Fadiman’s collections in the 1950s includes some quite entertaining short stories that play off mathematical themes (Fantasia Mathematica, The Mathematical Magpie). (There are limericks that can lead to some mathematical discussion — A mathematician once confided/That a Mobius band is one-sided/And you’ll get quite a laugh/If you cut one in half/For it stays in one piece when divided.)
This is a place where we can exploit modern technology. Part of the burden of instruction can be carried by reference to reliable links on the internet and videos from such sources as Derek Muller’s Veritasium and the series that you (Marty) produced some time ago. An important role of the modern teacher is as a curator and the goal is to encourage people to take the initiative to do their own digging to check things out.
from ed:
“… and the series that you (Marty) produced some time ago.”
Please explain?
Damned if I know.
Mathologer, maybe.
How much did you have to pay Marty? Hope they didn’t slug you too much as that’s one of the means of stopping FOI.
Nothing. ACARA has been good that way, although this was also not an extensive FOI.