9 Jul
2012
9 Jul
'12
11:34 a.m.
I think the problem was more with the school than the
teacher, they
should have got a teacher who knew the subject.
Well, as I've said before, I never had a maths or physics teacher who I
regarded as clueful. These were the subjects, of coursem where I'd done a
lot of extra readign and had discovered the interesting bits for myself.
It's quite possible that otehr teachers were as cleless, I was jsut not
able to spot it.
Perhaps more worryingly, I never had a teacher who inspired me.
Sadly, there is the same problem here. A lot, if not
most, of the
primary and secondary school teachers-to-be here do not know even basic
mathematics. The University here (the one which produces engineers and
Ph Ds in engineering, physics and chemistry) added an extra year to the
M Sc courses long ago, so as to allow the students to catch up with the
maths and physics. Even in the early 1970s, the curriculum in the UK up
to O-levels was at least a year ahead of that here in Sweden; I went to
Now that's intersting. The exams are realyl dubmbed down here now,
certainly compared ot what I did. I wonder if that was to bring us into
line with other countries :-(.
A friend of mine was studying maths at the second-oldest English
universtiy abvot 110 years ago. Soem of the stuff he was being taught in
the first year was stuff I'd covered at school (officially, not things
I'd decided to teach myself).
-tony