Who cares if I could drop a surd at 50 paces?
Once in a while a small boy steps out from the sycophantic throng. He raises his arm and points at the preening emperor. “Look at that man,” he cries. “He’s got no clothes.” This week the boy in question was a Darlington teacher, Terry Bladen. He suggested to a teaching union conference in Bournemouth that the emperor in question was maths. Twenty per cent fewer pupils sat maths A-level last year. Facing the virtual collapse of the subject as a general academic pursuit, the heroic Mr Bladen proposed that compulsory maths was unnecessary. “How often do the majority of people need or use mathematical concepts once they have left schools?” he asked. “Mathematics has always been a main subject,” said Mr Bladen, “but why?” You could have heard a crozier drop in the Sistine Chapel. Up in Darlington freethinking may be in order, but in the Vatican of Charles Clarke’s mind, mind-numbing conservatism and control hold sway. There the national curriculum is a sacred text. It is a facet of control
