From inventing the zero to zero

Our ancestors invented the zero and that's just where we might end up if we continue to be beaten in mathematics by not only East Asians, but also peoples not traditionally thought of as numerically outstanding, such as Turks and Israelis. Nor is it any comfort that Indians do considerably better than most nationalities including Americans, because of the Indian test-taker's profile.

They belong to our elite - at least economically since they can afford to go abroad - and benefit from this country's best. They are far more focussed than, for instance Americans, for a variety of reasons. Most significantly, about 60% of Indian GMAT test-takers are engineers by training as opposed to the global average of 15%. This means that Indians have the advantage of background, focus and training. Despite this they are beaten by people statistically unlikely to be engineers, relatively unmotivated and most likely not hailing from the economic elite in their own countries.

This is deeply troubling because it signals a skills deficit produced almost certainly by the shortcomings of our education system and this skills deficit threatens our development. Without highly trained engineers, it is unlikely that India will ever be able to build the massive infrastructure projects needed to lift the masses out of humiliating poverty. The goals might have changed from dams to nuclear power plants, but both still require people highly competent in maths. Do we want to wind up like the UK and US where engineering jobs are the hardest to fill because students flock to the humanities? Our poverty ensures we cannot afford such luxuries. Numerical skills are an essential complement to literacy. To be second rate in this area is to lose out on an essential ingredient of national competitiveness.

(View: No need to ring alarm bells)


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

No need to ring alarm bells

First, the good news. With an average score of 42 in the quantitative section of the Graduate Management Admission Test ( GMAT) - used as selection criteria by B-schools across the world - Indian students placed seventh globally, comfortably beating the global average of 37. Now for the bad; Chinese students topped the list, beating the Indians handily. Given the obsession with China in this country, this is likely to cause dark warnings about Chinese students and corporate workforce outdoing their Indian counterparts. But this is a false alarm. Standardised test scores have very little bearing on the actual academic or professional quality of an individual. To understand what these scores really signify, one could look at Battle Hymn Of The Tiger Mother, a book by Chinese-American academic and author Amy Chua on how Chinese mothers raise successful kids. It is a somewhat alarming account of parental pressure. We have Chua forcing her seven-year-old daughter to practise piano for ...
Keep reading

The Tea Party: a creedal passion past its prime | Michael Weiss

Image
American political history is characterised by cyclical convulsions. We've just seen another, but it's a passing phase At its worst, the American Tea Party is a helter-skelter of conservative populism, a movement broadly united by small-government principles but more animated by a hatred of the current president. It lacks a coherent vision and prefers paranoid sloganeering and anti-establishment platitudes to a viable platform. At its most benign, the Tea Party represents what the late historian Samuel Huntington , in an insight more valuable than his more famous one about a "clash of civilizations," once termed a "creedal-passion period" of American politics. That is to say, a cyclical phenomenon that occurs every few generations in Anglo-Saxon cultures and has its roots in the Protestant Great Awakening of the 1740s . Creedal passion periods, in other words, are manifestations of American Puritanism, that fatal shore upon which idealistic expectations inv...
Keep reading

It's not just John Bercow charm is disappearing from public life. About time too | Tanya Gold

Image
Whether in the courtly language of Westminster or the honeyed words of Cameron, it conceals a fundamental dishonesty There was a fight in the Palace of Westminster this week. It was a small fight, and nothing to ruffle the International League Table of Legislator Physical Violence, where first place is still held by Taiwan, because the opposition and ruling party frequently beat each other and sometimes throw food . Still, this fight was non-violent, instructive and very British. Mark Pritchard , a Tory MP described "as mild mannered" in the way that serial killers are usually described as mild-mannered until the lampshades made of skin are found in the basement, apparently impeded the movement of Speaker Bercow, who was progressing through the palace like a small medieval king mounted on a skateboard. "The courtesy of the house is that honourable members should stand aside when the Speaker passes by," said Bercow , whose rudeness to his former Tory colleagues is m...
Keep reading