I sometimes squirm when I look at the teaching of Mathematics in the school syllabus.

This brings back memories of my younger days when we had Modern Mathematics as a subject.

In my son’s school textbook, 3 x 5 and 5 x 3 can yield two different results. While the former can be a tick (you score a point), the latter may earn you zero marks for the working.

The rationale is based on the question. If the question says, “My mother prepared five plates with three apples each. How many apples does my mother serve on the table?”

The answer is 15, but the working should be “5 x 3 = 15”. If you put “3 x 5 = 15”, your answer will be marked wrong.

Real-life example

A parent brought to my attention the case of her child’s examination paper.

The question goes something like this: Person A, Person B and Person C each has 1,700 stamps, so how many stamps do they have in total?

“Why must it be so rigid 3 x 1,700?” she asked. “Why can’t it be 1,700 x 3? The answer and final result of both sequence is still the same!”

However, because this was the Education Ministry’s syllabus, the teacher had to deduct marks for the wrong working and the child has to learn that the correct answer is “3×1,700”.

As one other parent rightly pointed out, it is not like the children having to bother whether it is three or five boys, but the total number of oranges that they have.

“If the group of three boys have five oranges each, they have the same number of oranges as the group of five boys with three oranges each!” she said.“As long as they know they are calculating oranges, not the boys and that is good enough.”

In fact, looking at the way the question is phrased, I would assume that “3×1,700” and “1,700 x 3” would both be correct workings because in both workings, there are three persons and each has 1,700 stamps; therefore, cumulatively, they have 5,100 stamps anyway. What we are interested in is the cumulative figure of 5100 stamps!

It is like saying that you have three baskets of rambutans, and each basket has 20 rambutans, therefore the total of rambutans that you have is “3 x 20 = 60.”

Why can’t it be 20×3= 60?You have 20 rambutans in each of the three baskets; therefore, how many rambutans do you have in total? The answer is 60. After all, there is more than one way to skin a cat.

It is not curiosity that kills the cat, but the rigidity of our ministry officials who designed the curriculum.

Modern Maths

Back in the 80s, we had a subject that they called Modern Mathematics. I am not surprised those who designed the curriculum were on par with one of those “intellectual nuts” and half-baked academicians we have in our universities.

As I had memorised the entire time table and could easily do the additions and subtractions, answers to a mathematical question can be solved very easily.

Instead of encouraging speed, we were taught to show the working one step at a time. Although we followed the steps religiously, this process is hardly relevant today.

Most of my mathematical skills were learnt using the traditional methods, way before we had Modern Mathematics; today, I hardly even use the step-by-step working in doing a calculation, less so to even recall what was taught!

In fact, most people would agree with me that an Excel sheet or a simple calculator is what one needs to do the calculations. Or for those of us who have committed our timetable into memory, we just use our mental calculations to get the answers.

My question is where are we heading to as a nation in terms of how we educate our children, the future generation of Malaysians? With the way we are going, are we becoming dumber?

STEPHEN NG is an ordinary citizen with an avid interest in following political developments in the country since 2008.