Welcome to another 'challenge your reality' rant. The Reality Teach to test mentally has become so intrinsically intertwined with adherence to National Curriculum that teachers of Mathematics have become institutionalised from the outset of their teaching careers. The Reasoning It is not their fault, my wife is included in this number and has been teaching secondary Mathematics for 25 years if we include her PGCE placements. However, as a person diagnosed with ADHD, maths has always been a beautiful and wonderfully complex world of discovery, a view that was shared by Pythagoras who built a complete religion around it. On comparison, my own secondary schooling, centred around the new National Curriculum Standards (yes, I'm that old), crippled that passion in me for years until I finally got the opportunity to teach myself. Yes, mathematics is the verifiable aspect of science, the rules and the regulations, but it is also art. It is why STEM became STEAM in recent years
Over the next few posts I am going to break down the three stakeholders in a little more detail. The Child is the easiest label to define as it depends entirely on the child's capability and development. From birth through to adolescence the child will progress from wanting their concerns addressing to achieving autonomy and being the primary decision maker. Over the same period, the Parent (same labelling caveats apply as before) should transition from being the primary decision maker to wanting their concerns addressed. So who is the Parent? I've heard an annoyance, a waste of time, over protective, demanding... The School is the most complex, comprising of Teachers, pastoral staff, support staff... I'm ditching these openers. I ran out of patience too quickly with this one and could not even complete the thought as it riled me up so much. The Parent I am starting here because from experience this has been the hardest position to be in. Years of experience with other p