TONOTA: After all, the ability to solve simultaneous or quadratic equations may be of little use to most Form 5 leavers who will not proceed to do Mathematics or Science at tertiary level. In the 1980s, I taught at Lobatse Secondary School. At the time, ‘O’ Level classes with the more academically bright students were taught Cambridge ‘O’ Level Mathematics. However, classes with less academically bright students pursued a Certificate in Arithmetic course.
Being less demanding, the vast majority of students would pass the course and have something to show for the two years that they spent doing the course. And topics covered in this course were more relevant to daily life and hence they would be spared the agony of trying to solve a quadratic equation! For example, they would learn how hire purchase payments are worked out. Let us say that a store is selling a fridge for P4 000 cash. But the customer also has the option of paying for it through hire purchase. Using this method of payment, he might pay a deposit of P1, 500 after which he would then pay monthly installments of P200 for 24 months. Now knowledge of basic arithmetic, and not quadratic equations, would assist a student to work out how much he would have to fork out if he wanted to pay in this form of buying. Can the reader work it out? Yes, the answer is P6 300. Now the student doing this arithmetic course would realise that the customer would be wise to pay cash upfront and so save a small fortune! So, we can see that knowing this would help students later in life. However, government has since insisted that all Form 4 and 5 studnts should do ‘O’ Level/BGCSE Mathematics! The result? Many students simply fail the course with grades F, G and U, and so have nothing to show for their efforts! How demotivating?
