Boys and Maths. Why is it no longer adding up?

When I first took over as Headmaster of Huntley, an all boys prep school, I would interview new boys and 95% of the time I knew I had my first question in the bag. "Let me tell you what your favourite subject is," I'd say. Prospective parents would be in awe as I told them that Maths was their sons favourite subject. The boy would look at me as if to say, "How'd he know that?" In modern day terms I was like the TV character on the "mentalist" who always knows what people are thinking. ( Except in my case it was knowing what makes boys tick!) In the space of nine years this has changed dramatically and now I am more like a bad epidsode of "Who done it?" three guesses if I'm lucky.

So why the big change in what subject appeals to boys?

It would be easy for me to sit back and blame the curriculum for this turn about or be even more direct and blame the feminization of the Maths curriculum. However, it is much simpler than that, schools stopped teaching in a way that caters for boys.

Now don't get me wrong I am not Numeracy Project bashing, the
numeracy project came out with some laudable ideas. Making Maths "authentic" became the catch phrase and teaching them "strategies" became all in important. It is very hard to argue against any of these ideas, or would be if they hadn't somewhere along the line got it so horribly wrong. You see boys a linear creatures they love rules and they love strategies but they hate too many rules and too many strategies. Over do it and all you get is at best confusion at worst total overload. We stopped teaching boys the basics and expected them by osmosis to be able to identify what strategy they should be applying to a particular question. If they had a sound knowledge of basic facts and startegies they would much more easily see the connection between the two. I advocate ten minutes four times a week to fun quick fire basic facts type activities. This should then be followed by 40 minutes of strategies for problem solving in real world contexts.

Boys are also pragmatists. Take this example. "John has three friends and sixteen lollies. If he shares them equally his friends would get four each but what would happen if two more friends came along?" I actually posed this question to my class."That's easy," says one boy, with a twinkle in his eye, "You would tell the others to hide them til they left." You see the problem is our Maths problems aren't that authentic. Teachers proposed horrible questions that weren't really occurring in the boys every day life. How could we do it better? Take this example. If I asked the same boys to arrange a sleepover for sixteen friends and find the best Pizza deal to feed them given that mum had given them $50. Well then you would have a break down of real time specials from Hells Pizza, Dominos and Pizza Hutt within five minutes. That's authentic!




Problem solving is something that appeals to boys. Over the holidays my two boys built a hut. Measurement, angles and geometric terms were flying left right and centre. Creating bracing with 45 degree angles, working out the area of ply needed to cover the hut. The Maths problem solving was real time for the boys. It was like reality TV, our own mini episode of "The Block". There was also a chance for them to express their creativity by planning their hut. At Huntley the boys build huts in the Orchard and it would blow most parents away with the creativity and problem solving capability the boys display.

In summary we must make Mathematics more authentic and from a problem solving foundation. Basic facts are still important and should be practised regularly over short time frames. Mixing up your Maths lessons is a sure fire way of ensuring boys stay on task and activated. Problem solving that involves a range of mathematical disciplines is very important for boys to explore the relationship between concepts.

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