The State of Declining Mathematics Enrolments

This post, as indicated by the title, is ostensibly about the State of declining enrolments in mathematics subjects. That State, as we shall see, turns out to be Queensland. But, first things first.

Last week, AMSI released its annual Mathematics Participation Report Card, complete with a media release and a media notice of an Australian story on the report (Murdoch, paywalled). Begun in 2008, AMSI’s report has become a tradition of sorts, kind of an Australian Groundhog Day. Each year, mathematicians poke out their heads, look at the darker maths ed skies, mutter “Bugger this, it’s worse”, and go back inside. This year is no different. Except, it turns out to be different. Continue reading “The State of Declining Mathematics Enrolments”

The Other Canada

A month or so ago we gave Ontario a whack, for deciding that testing whether their teachers could do arithmetic was racist. That was not the first time we had run into Canadian nitwittery. Last year, Greg Ashman went to battle with some pretty obtuse Canadians, over Alberta’s new mathematics curriculum. And, ACARA somehow landed upon British Columbia’s pretty flaky curriculum for one of their international benchmark thingos. One could be forgiven for concluding that Canada is a Federation of weirdnesses.

But, maybe not totally.

Continue reading “The Other Canada”