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Maths is not a GCSE

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, for myself 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.

In 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, the inclusion of art stimulates our fragile human minds like nothing else.

Yes, we can talk about finding the perpendicular bisector and have students draw the clinical fundamentals or we can gift them a pencil, ruler, compass and a set of instructions to recreate artworks that have endured for millenia.

Maths requires exploration, Geometry should not be "this is a square because all the sides are the same and the angles are 90*"

Basic Euclidean principles show that a square is formed by finding the four cardinal points on a circle. 

Instructions
"1. Draw a circle.
2. With a ruler, draw a horizontal diameter. Remember it has to cross through the centre point, otherwise it is a chord and does not bisect the circle.
3. Make your radius bigger and draw arcs from each end of the diameter so the arcs overlap.
4. With a ruler, connect the points where the two arcs intersect and extend the line so it creates a second diameter. This vertical diameter creates a perpendicular bisector of the horizontal diameter.
5. With a ruler, connect the points where the diameters meet the circle.
6. What shape have you made?
7. How can you prove it?

Now your basic "draw the bisector" lesson has become something tangible and teachable, integrating properties of shape and angles into what may have previously been for your students, a mundane and pointless task.

As always, if you a scaffolding, then scaffold fully. Don't dig the foundations of the buttress you'll have to become just because your students lack the knowledge to be independent learners.

So to fully express the sentiment:

Maths is not a GCSE, it is the framework for seeing and expressing the beauty in the world around us. 

Love to you all

Biscuits_Box 
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