purporting to find that more might be achieved with less well-qualified teachers.

The notion that maths can

be better taught by teachers of inferior, rather than superior mathematical knowledge, is presented without serious qualification. It is tendentious and highly misleading.

For it simply means that the “know-less” teachers are better as teachers and, therefore, better able to communicate what they know.

It does not mean that these teachers would not be better if they possessed a superior mathematical knowledge!

In no field of study are knowledge and understanding separable. If the “know-less” teachers are better teachers this probably means that the, in fact, have a better grasp of maths than others more formally knowledgeable. Did the researchers research this possibility?

It is a perversion of education and a real recipe for disaster even to suggest that “know-less” is an acceptable state of affairs. But this is a political and not an intellectual conclusion.

The reason why a country such as Hungary has been able to

sustain a high quality of maths teaching is that maths under

communism could not readily be adulterated by political ideology. The study of maths, therefore, retained its intellectual purity and hence its respect and prestige. The moral of this ought to be studied in our own highly politicised

system.

Nigel Probert

29 Cae Caradog

Caerphilly