SG notes part 3: let's talk about becoming a maths teacher
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Title : SG notes part 3: let's talk about becoming a maths teacher
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Title : SG notes part 3: let's talk about becoming a maths teacher
link : SG notes part 3: let's talk about becoming a maths teacher
news-today.world | Hello guys, I'd like to turn my attention to a topic that started because of a conversation I had with my nephew - I stress that this is not going to be a piece specifically about him, but this is where this post is going to start. You see, I heard from my family that my nephew wanted to be a maths teacher when he grows up and my first reaction was, no no no no no can someone please tell him that's an awful idea or do I have to be the one to tell him? He wants to become a maths teacher who all the wrong reasons: look the kid is good at maths, bravo - he wants to find a job where he would feel totally competent and comfortable. Since he finds his current maths syllabus at school easy, becoming a maths teacher seemed like a way for him to do something he is good at and would find quite easy (or so he thinks). Then when I brought up the topic, he suddenly said he wanted to become a scientist and I couldn't contain my delight. He then went to his mother and told her that he was confused as to why uncle Alex was so happy that he wanted to be a scientist and not a teacher - after all, his grandparents (my parents) were teachers. So, like I said, this piece is not about my nephew's future per se, but I'd just like to look back upon my own career path and address a few key issues for my younger readers may be thinking about your future careers. Here's a great song for you to listen to whilst we start this discussion.
1. Look way beyond your current syllabus
I have established a successful career in corporate finance and there wasn't a single lesson I had in school or university that had any content even remotely related to corporate finance. Everything I learnt about corporate finance was picked up in my 30s and 40s, many years after I had completed my formal education but of course, the learning never stops. I am learning new things about my industry every single day and most of the time, I am picking this information up by myself and I most certainly do not need to sit down in a classroom with a teacher in order to learn new things. My late uncle had to drop out of school when he was about my nephew's age due to poverty - but did he rely solely on the things that he was taught in school to make a living? Hell no, my uncle was poor but not stupid, he taught himself so many things and went on to run a successful business in People's Park. Everything he learnt about business, he learnt it working in the markets of People's Park, not in the classroom! By that token, whilst I am very happy of course that my nephew is good at maths, surely there are other things out there which he can be good at which he has yet to have the chance to learn. He's still young, there's much out there waiting for him to discover, so why should he limit himself to things that he has already learnt when there's a world of possibilities out there? He's only 15 for crying out aloud, he's still a student, life for him still revolves around school so I can't help but feel that this choice merely reflected his current surroundings rather than it being a proper informed decision about the full array of options he may have in the future.
2. The world changes very quickly
When I was my nephew's age, it was the year 1991 - the Soviet Union had just broken up, Iraq invaded Kuwait which led to the Gulf War, the president of American then was George Bush senior and my favourite song of that year is probably Gypsy Woman (She's Homeless) by Crystal Waters. Yup, a lot has changed in the world since but the most notable difference was of course the near total absence of the internet then. Oh we were still a few years away from getting our first modems and email addresses and now if the internet goes down in my office, it would be chaos - like we would just go home as we couldn't possibly get anything done without the internet. And when I am not working, I'm probably doing something on social media such as looking at Instagram, blogging or catching up with friends on Facebook. Even the way experience old technology has changed, think about how the telephone has evolved from the year 1991, when barely anyone had a mobile phone (and for those who did, they were huge) to the number of things you could do on a mobile phone these days. By the time my nephew gets to my age, it would be the year 2045 and no doubt, they would probably have some super high-tech invention then which they just can't live without in 2045 but still hasn't been invented in 2018 yet. So the employer who could potentially be giving my nephew a job when he completes his NS and formal education would probably be manufacturing a brilliant product that hasn't even been invented yet as I write this today.
Allow me to talk about a really inspirational success story: one of the richest men in the world today is Jack Ma 马云 and he was born in 1964 - so the kind of education he would have received in communist China, growing up in the 1960s and 1970s would have been a world away from the world of internet commerce where Ma makes his fortune today. Mind you, Jack Ma studied English at university, okay that is a useful skill of course for someone in China, but he didn't have a single qualification to do with computers or the internet - this is why I roll my eyes when I hear about young people these days expecting their degrees to prepare themselves for the working world, they expect to be spoon fed all the knowledge, expertise and experience they need to become employable. That is why I find people like Jack Ma so inspirational because he broke the mould - he was willing to try something new that no one had done before. For someone who built his success on e-commerce, Jack Ma never ever wrote a line of code. If Jack Ma had followed my nephew's principle of sticking to something he was good at, he probably would have capitalized on the fact that he has a degree in English - in fact, when he was a struggling student, he practiced his English with tourists by working as a tour guide. The losers out there would say, "what's wrong with being a tour guide, that's a perfectly respectable job. Are you looking down on hardworking tour guides?" But if Jack Ma had settled for that, would he have become one of not just China's richest men, but one of the richest people in the world today? Come on. This brings me neatly to my next point.
3. Where is the ambition?
Recently, I wrote a piece about a number of other career paths that I didn't go down. I remember when I was my nephew's age, I didn't quite know what I wanted to do and a few crazy ideas such as becoming a DJ. If I was going to become a DJ, I wanted to become the world's most famous DJ - I wanted to be playing in the most trendy night clubs in New York, London, Tokyo and Ibiza whilst doing remixes for the world's most famous singers. I was extremely ambitious, no matter what I did, I wanted to be incredibly successful at it. As for teachers, well my parents were teachers and I thought, they both came from very poor families and couldn't get a half-decent education with WW2 happening when they were young, becoming primary school teachers was probably the best option for them given those extremely tough circumstances. My nephew however, has the best education money can buy in Singapore - he has wealthy parents who are willing to pay for him to attend whatever course in town or hire any tuition teacher he needs in order to make sure he scores well in his exams. The lucky boy lives in a beautiful condo and has a maid, he doesn't even need to wash a cup or do the laundry. With all these resources invested in his education and his future, I was shocked that he aspired no more than to become a humble school teacher? Seriously? Am I the only one who realizes that something is missing? Okay, this is when I have probably offended a large number of my readers who are thinking, "how dare you, what is wrong with being a teacher, that's a perfectly respectable job - are you looking down on honest, hardworking teachers?"
I would love to see my nephew try his best to achieve a lot in his working life, I would like to see him aim high and have dreams. And of course, not everything is going to work out to plan but I would like him to at least try and if all else fails, fine there's always teaching as a last resort. Heck, I have a friend from VJC who carved out a career in IT after graduating from NUS. However, in his late 30s, he got retrenched and really struggled to find another job that would pay as well. After a year of unemployment and a family to feed, he turned to teaching as last resort and that's how some older people end up in teaching. He said, "it's just for a few years till I sort something out" but he's still teaching today and I don't foresee him leaving that job anytime soon. The longer he is a teacher, the less chance of him finding something better. I don't know how much of an influence my parents have been on my nephew (my sister assures me that their influence is limited), but I daresay my sister and my brother-in-law are afraid of shooting down my nephew's idea of becoming a maths teacher has a lot to do with them being afraid of my parents attacking them for "looking down" on teachers - oh boy, you have no idea just how fragile my parents can be when it comes to anyone daring to criticize teachers. They have such low self-esteem that if my sister ever told my nephew that becoming a teacher was a terrible idea, my parents would probably take that as a personal attack. But I don't mind offending my parents to make a point.
4. Our relationship with maths today is different and will keep changing
There is a huge mismatch between the kind of work we need to do to earn money in the real world and the kind of topics that students are forced to study in the Singaporean education system. I can't say this clearly enough: maths is totally useless to the vast majority of us adults in the real world. There are some careers where you need some kind of maths, but when you look at it a little bit more closely, you'll realize that even in areas where maths is thought to be useful, it is actually not relevant because of computers. Do you actually see an accountant doing calculations with a calculator as if he was a high school student taking a maths exam? Hell no, if there's any kind of calculations to be made, it would be done by computers and the accountant will need become experts in using a range of accounting software to do their job well, but that is more a question of IT rather than maths per se because the computer is doing the calculations, not you - in the same way a cashier merely processes the payment at the till without actually doing any maths. Likewise, I work in banking but the kind of maths I use on a day by day basis never exceeds the PSLE syllabus for the same reason: if there's anything more complicated, no human would do it. Everything is completely automated - so for example, I deal with fixed income products and there's a daily dirty price that I have to quote the buyer which reflects the accrued interest between each coupon payment date. Do I sit down like a student and work out this correct price on a piece of paper? Hell no - my company has automated the process so all I have to do is to go onto the company's intranet system and look up that price which is automatically calculated everyday, that's right, by a computer programme. This is a lot faster, eliminates the possibility of any human error and that's the future: computers will do all the maths so you don't have to.
Yet for some reason, we still insist on making students do maths at school when really we should scrap most maths lesson and replace them with IT lessons. However, the problem is that the people working in education are not working in the real world out there, they exist in their little bubble and they are not helping the situation by making students do this much pure maths. Thankfully, we have already seen huge changes to the syllabus of students today and what my nephew is studying is really quite different from what I had to do back in the day, when the focus was very much on the pure academic subjects like maths and sciences. What we are seeing is a positive trend, this shift to make education more and more relevant to the real world but it is still way too little especially in a place like Singapore. In the future, the kind of maths that would be taught to young students in 2030 or 2040 in the West would be quite different from what is taught today - the focus would definitely shift towards more practical applications of maths in the real world and how to use certain pieces of software to do all those complex calculations. You want to build your career on something that is going to be big part of the future - just like what Jack Ma did. You don't want to embark on a career that technology has already mostly rendered completely obsolete. A simple solution would be to replace most of the maths syllabus with IT related modules such as coding, network administration or anti-virus security to make it a lot more relevant to the modern world - one that I'm afraid most teachers tend not to inhabit especially if they have not done any other job but teaching.
5. And if my nephew is really that good at maths...
I know what you're going say, big data and yes, there will always be a place for people who are mathematicians. The percentage of people who actually use some form of applied mathematics in their jobs is actually very small but there are good jobs for people who are brilliant at maths. This begs the question: if my nephew is really that good at maths, then why the hell would he want to become a humble school teacher when he could be one of those quant analysts who rake in millions by working in investment banks? Yes there is money to be made by those who are brilliant in applied mathematics and the best mathematicians certainly do not end up in teaching, they go into banking. Oh it's like looking at someone like Joseph Schooling and saying, "you are a great swimming, why don't you become a life guard at the local swimming pool?" Hell no, why would someone like Schooling do that when he can represent the country at the Olympics, compete with the very best in the world and win Olympic gold medals? Hence if my nephew is really that brilliant at maths as my family claims he is, then him becoming a maths teacher is like Schooling getting a job at the Yio Chu Kang swimming complex as a life guard instead of going to compete at the Olympics. Really, someone needs to give that kid some career advice fast because none of this makes any sense. By all means, I think my nephew can certainly pursue a degree in maths if that's what he likes but please let's get him a great job where he can put his maths skills to good use.
6. Teaching maths is not about maths at all.
If my nephew wanted to teach maths because he loved teaching, then I'd be all for it. But if he wanted to teach maths because he loves maths, then I have to stand up and tell everyone that he is totally barking up the wrong tree. Being a maths teacher is a very difficult and demanding job: the easiest part of it all is probably the maths itself - by the time you're a qualified teacher, the O or A level syllabus will probably seem like a walk in the park of course, but how you communicate that information to a class full of young students is the biggest challenge of them all. You need to have a genuine love for working with young people, for the art of teaching young people in order to actually enjoy teaching - if anyone comes to me and tells me they want to become a teacher, I would suggest that they get some work experience with actually teaching before deciding that's for them. Would they be able to deal with unmotivated and disruptive students? There's a variety of ways to get that kind of work experience from giving tuition or doing some kind of volunteer work with a charity where you get to work with young people. Whilst I don't doubt that my nephew is good at maths, I have my reservations because he has had absolutely no experience doing any kind of teaching in his life, none whatsoever - just because you're good at something doesn't mean you know how to convey that knowledge to another person especially if they struggle with the subject. Teachers need to be experts at child psychology rather than the subject they teach because what they do in the classroom is a lot harder than you think - it's not a job that I could do. Let him get some relevant experience to help him experience teaching, then we'll decide if he is even suitable for teaching.
7. Teaching is a calling rather than a career choice
Like nursing, I believe teaching is a calling (I invite my readers who are teachers to respond to that) - it is an incredibly difficult job that is not as well paid as a lot of the other options in the private sector. The primary reason many people enter teaching is because they are attracted by the experience that teaching offers - it can be a very rewarding career if you are a good teacher. Just as well these great teachers are deriving joy, satisfaction and fulfillment from their interactions with their students because the fact is they are getting paid a lot less than say lawyers, bankers and doctors. But if you ask a lot of teachers if they would leave teaching for a better paid job, they would say no thank you, I am extremely happy doing what I am doing and I can't imagine myself doing anything else. This is because they have found their calling, their purpose in life and they are extremely good teachers - this calling however is based on their love of teaching rather than the love of the subject. A teacher is always putting the students' needs first, making sure that the students understand the subject and the teachers has that huge responsibility for the students' learning process - that's simply not in my nephew's character to do that because he's in love with maths, rather than teaching per se and hopefully, after I could convince him that there are plenty of more suitable careers he can pursue with maths in mind.
8. I'm prepared to be proven wrong.
Finally, I'd like to finish on a humble note and say that I am more than willing to keep an open mind about the issue. After all, it is harsh to judge young people at the age of 15 - they are young, they deserve to have the time and space to learn more, to grow up, to experience the world and we should step back, let them do all that at their own pace before passing any kind of judgement. He does have a great home environment with loving parents - both my sister and my brother-in-law are very successful in their respective fields and you can't find better role models than that. Okay, my parents are in the picture as well as caregivers but I think their influence is thankfully rather limited. I would like you to think about some of the really good teachers you had in the past, do you think that any of them had all the skills they needed to become the great teachers they are at the age of 15? Probably not and that's the thing about growing up - we can keep learning new skills and keep improving ourselves and a boy at 15 is not the finished product, not by a long way. Would I be able to do the job I am doing today in corporate finance as a 15 year old? Of course not, I was far from ready at that age. So if my nephew really would like to become a teacher, he still has plenty of time to acquire the necessary skills to become good at teaching (on issues like handling unmotivated and disruptive students for example)and by all means, I'm willing to keep an open mind about that. Personally, I certainly didn't think I'd be working in corporate finance at the age of 15.
I think the problem is that nobody is talking to him about his future career as they deem he's too young now, that we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, he just needs to focus on the next test or exam he has to do. That was certainly my case when I was a 15 year old, we were somehow just expected to focus on our studies and the working world was just something so far away we didn't need to think about then. But there's no reason why one can't engage a 15 year old in a sensible conversation about his future career plans, after all, it would help him relate what he is studying at the moment to his future career. It is somewhat unfair to criticize my nephew for the choices he has made at that age, after all he is doing it without the adults in his life offering much guidance on the issue. The general consensus has been, "oh you can't tell a 15 year old what he can't do at that age, we want to be encouraging and tell him he can do whatever he wants and if he wants to become a teacher, then we will be supportive etc". I think there is a balance to be struck here, yes you want to support teenagers in their aspirations but more importantly, it is important to give them the information they need to make informed choices about their future and that can be a hard balance to strike for parents. I hope that in writing this piece, I have started a useful conversation not just for him but also for all my young readers who are thinking about the directions of their future careers. So, over to you. Please feel free to leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.
1. Look way beyond your current syllabus
I have established a successful career in corporate finance and there wasn't a single lesson I had in school or university that had any content even remotely related to corporate finance. Everything I learnt about corporate finance was picked up in my 30s and 40s, many years after I had completed my formal education but of course, the learning never stops. I am learning new things about my industry every single day and most of the time, I am picking this information up by myself and I most certainly do not need to sit down in a classroom with a teacher in order to learn new things. My late uncle had to drop out of school when he was about my nephew's age due to poverty - but did he rely solely on the things that he was taught in school to make a living? Hell no, my uncle was poor but not stupid, he taught himself so many things and went on to run a successful business in People's Park. Everything he learnt about business, he learnt it working in the markets of People's Park, not in the classroom! By that token, whilst I am very happy of course that my nephew is good at maths, surely there are other things out there which he can be good at which he has yet to have the chance to learn. He's still young, there's much out there waiting for him to discover, so why should he limit himself to things that he has already learnt when there's a world of possibilities out there? He's only 15 for crying out aloud, he's still a student, life for him still revolves around school so I can't help but feel that this choice merely reflected his current surroundings rather than it being a proper informed decision about the full array of options he may have in the future.
2. The world changes very quickly
When I was my nephew's age, it was the year 1991 - the Soviet Union had just broken up, Iraq invaded Kuwait which led to the Gulf War, the president of American then was George Bush senior and my favourite song of that year is probably Gypsy Woman (She's Homeless) by Crystal Waters. Yup, a lot has changed in the world since but the most notable difference was of course the near total absence of the internet then. Oh we were still a few years away from getting our first modems and email addresses and now if the internet goes down in my office, it would be chaos - like we would just go home as we couldn't possibly get anything done without the internet. And when I am not working, I'm probably doing something on social media such as looking at Instagram, blogging or catching up with friends on Facebook. Even the way experience old technology has changed, think about how the telephone has evolved from the year 1991, when barely anyone had a mobile phone (and for those who did, they were huge) to the number of things you could do on a mobile phone these days. By the time my nephew gets to my age, it would be the year 2045 and no doubt, they would probably have some super high-tech invention then which they just can't live without in 2045 but still hasn't been invented in 2018 yet. So the employer who could potentially be giving my nephew a job when he completes his NS and formal education would probably be manufacturing a brilliant product that hasn't even been invented yet as I write this today.
Allow me to talk about a really inspirational success story: one of the richest men in the world today is Jack Ma 马云 and he was born in 1964 - so the kind of education he would have received in communist China, growing up in the 1960s and 1970s would have been a world away from the world of internet commerce where Ma makes his fortune today. Mind you, Jack Ma studied English at university, okay that is a useful skill of course for someone in China, but he didn't have a single qualification to do with computers or the internet - this is why I roll my eyes when I hear about young people these days expecting their degrees to prepare themselves for the working world, they expect to be spoon fed all the knowledge, expertise and experience they need to become employable. That is why I find people like Jack Ma so inspirational because he broke the mould - he was willing to try something new that no one had done before. For someone who built his success on e-commerce, Jack Ma never ever wrote a line of code. If Jack Ma had followed my nephew's principle of sticking to something he was good at, he probably would have capitalized on the fact that he has a degree in English - in fact, when he was a struggling student, he practiced his English with tourists by working as a tour guide. The losers out there would say, "what's wrong with being a tour guide, that's a perfectly respectable job. Are you looking down on hardworking tour guides?" But if Jack Ma had settled for that, would he have become one of not just China's richest men, but one of the richest people in the world today? Come on. This brings me neatly to my next point.
3. Where is the ambition?
Recently, I wrote a piece about a number of other career paths that I didn't go down. I remember when I was my nephew's age, I didn't quite know what I wanted to do and a few crazy ideas such as becoming a DJ. If I was going to become a DJ, I wanted to become the world's most famous DJ - I wanted to be playing in the most trendy night clubs in New York, London, Tokyo and Ibiza whilst doing remixes for the world's most famous singers. I was extremely ambitious, no matter what I did, I wanted to be incredibly successful at it. As for teachers, well my parents were teachers and I thought, they both came from very poor families and couldn't get a half-decent education with WW2 happening when they were young, becoming primary school teachers was probably the best option for them given those extremely tough circumstances. My nephew however, has the best education money can buy in Singapore - he has wealthy parents who are willing to pay for him to attend whatever course in town or hire any tuition teacher he needs in order to make sure he scores well in his exams. The lucky boy lives in a beautiful condo and has a maid, he doesn't even need to wash a cup or do the laundry. With all these resources invested in his education and his future, I was shocked that he aspired no more than to become a humble school teacher? Seriously? Am I the only one who realizes that something is missing? Okay, this is when I have probably offended a large number of my readers who are thinking, "how dare you, what is wrong with being a teacher, that's a perfectly respectable job - are you looking down on honest, hardworking teachers?"
I would love to see my nephew try his best to achieve a lot in his working life, I would like to see him aim high and have dreams. And of course, not everything is going to work out to plan but I would like him to at least try and if all else fails, fine there's always teaching as a last resort. Heck, I have a friend from VJC who carved out a career in IT after graduating from NUS. However, in his late 30s, he got retrenched and really struggled to find another job that would pay as well. After a year of unemployment and a family to feed, he turned to teaching as last resort and that's how some older people end up in teaching. He said, "it's just for a few years till I sort something out" but he's still teaching today and I don't foresee him leaving that job anytime soon. The longer he is a teacher, the less chance of him finding something better. I don't know how much of an influence my parents have been on my nephew (my sister assures me that their influence is limited), but I daresay my sister and my brother-in-law are afraid of shooting down my nephew's idea of becoming a maths teacher has a lot to do with them being afraid of my parents attacking them for "looking down" on teachers - oh boy, you have no idea just how fragile my parents can be when it comes to anyone daring to criticize teachers. They have such low self-esteem that if my sister ever told my nephew that becoming a teacher was a terrible idea, my parents would probably take that as a personal attack. But I don't mind offending my parents to make a point.
4. Our relationship with maths today is different and will keep changing
There is a huge mismatch between the kind of work we need to do to earn money in the real world and the kind of topics that students are forced to study in the Singaporean education system. I can't say this clearly enough: maths is totally useless to the vast majority of us adults in the real world. There are some careers where you need some kind of maths, but when you look at it a little bit more closely, you'll realize that even in areas where maths is thought to be useful, it is actually not relevant because of computers. Do you actually see an accountant doing calculations with a calculator as if he was a high school student taking a maths exam? Hell no, if there's any kind of calculations to be made, it would be done by computers and the accountant will need become experts in using a range of accounting software to do their job well, but that is more a question of IT rather than maths per se because the computer is doing the calculations, not you - in the same way a cashier merely processes the payment at the till without actually doing any maths. Likewise, I work in banking but the kind of maths I use on a day by day basis never exceeds the PSLE syllabus for the same reason: if there's anything more complicated, no human would do it. Everything is completely automated - so for example, I deal with fixed income products and there's a daily dirty price that I have to quote the buyer which reflects the accrued interest between each coupon payment date. Do I sit down like a student and work out this correct price on a piece of paper? Hell no - my company has automated the process so all I have to do is to go onto the company's intranet system and look up that price which is automatically calculated everyday, that's right, by a computer programme. This is a lot faster, eliminates the possibility of any human error and that's the future: computers will do all the maths so you don't have to.
Yet for some reason, we still insist on making students do maths at school when really we should scrap most maths lesson and replace them with IT lessons. However, the problem is that the people working in education are not working in the real world out there, they exist in their little bubble and they are not helping the situation by making students do this much pure maths. Thankfully, we have already seen huge changes to the syllabus of students today and what my nephew is studying is really quite different from what I had to do back in the day, when the focus was very much on the pure academic subjects like maths and sciences. What we are seeing is a positive trend, this shift to make education more and more relevant to the real world but it is still way too little especially in a place like Singapore. In the future, the kind of maths that would be taught to young students in 2030 or 2040 in the West would be quite different from what is taught today - the focus would definitely shift towards more practical applications of maths in the real world and how to use certain pieces of software to do all those complex calculations. You want to build your career on something that is going to be big part of the future - just like what Jack Ma did. You don't want to embark on a career that technology has already mostly rendered completely obsolete. A simple solution would be to replace most of the maths syllabus with IT related modules such as coding, network administration or anti-virus security to make it a lot more relevant to the modern world - one that I'm afraid most teachers tend not to inhabit especially if they have not done any other job but teaching.
5. And if my nephew is really that good at maths...
I know what you're going say, big data and yes, there will always be a place for people who are mathematicians. The percentage of people who actually use some form of applied mathematics in their jobs is actually very small but there are good jobs for people who are brilliant at maths. This begs the question: if my nephew is really that good at maths, then why the hell would he want to become a humble school teacher when he could be one of those quant analysts who rake in millions by working in investment banks? Yes there is money to be made by those who are brilliant in applied mathematics and the best mathematicians certainly do not end up in teaching, they go into banking. Oh it's like looking at someone like Joseph Schooling and saying, "you are a great swimming, why don't you become a life guard at the local swimming pool?" Hell no, why would someone like Schooling do that when he can represent the country at the Olympics, compete with the very best in the world and win Olympic gold medals? Hence if my nephew is really that brilliant at maths as my family claims he is, then him becoming a maths teacher is like Schooling getting a job at the Yio Chu Kang swimming complex as a life guard instead of going to compete at the Olympics. Really, someone needs to give that kid some career advice fast because none of this makes any sense. By all means, I think my nephew can certainly pursue a degree in maths if that's what he likes but please let's get him a great job where he can put his maths skills to good use.
6. Teaching maths is not about maths at all.
If my nephew wanted to teach maths because he loved teaching, then I'd be all for it. But if he wanted to teach maths because he loves maths, then I have to stand up and tell everyone that he is totally barking up the wrong tree. Being a maths teacher is a very difficult and demanding job: the easiest part of it all is probably the maths itself - by the time you're a qualified teacher, the O or A level syllabus will probably seem like a walk in the park of course, but how you communicate that information to a class full of young students is the biggest challenge of them all. You need to have a genuine love for working with young people, for the art of teaching young people in order to actually enjoy teaching - if anyone comes to me and tells me they want to become a teacher, I would suggest that they get some work experience with actually teaching before deciding that's for them. Would they be able to deal with unmotivated and disruptive students? There's a variety of ways to get that kind of work experience from giving tuition or doing some kind of volunteer work with a charity where you get to work with young people. Whilst I don't doubt that my nephew is good at maths, I have my reservations because he has had absolutely no experience doing any kind of teaching in his life, none whatsoever - just because you're good at something doesn't mean you know how to convey that knowledge to another person especially if they struggle with the subject. Teachers need to be experts at child psychology rather than the subject they teach because what they do in the classroom is a lot harder than you think - it's not a job that I could do. Let him get some relevant experience to help him experience teaching, then we'll decide if he is even suitable for teaching.
7. Teaching is a calling rather than a career choice
Like nursing, I believe teaching is a calling (I invite my readers who are teachers to respond to that) - it is an incredibly difficult job that is not as well paid as a lot of the other options in the private sector. The primary reason many people enter teaching is because they are attracted by the experience that teaching offers - it can be a very rewarding career if you are a good teacher. Just as well these great teachers are deriving joy, satisfaction and fulfillment from their interactions with their students because the fact is they are getting paid a lot less than say lawyers, bankers and doctors. But if you ask a lot of teachers if they would leave teaching for a better paid job, they would say no thank you, I am extremely happy doing what I am doing and I can't imagine myself doing anything else. This is because they have found their calling, their purpose in life and they are extremely good teachers - this calling however is based on their love of teaching rather than the love of the subject. A teacher is always putting the students' needs first, making sure that the students understand the subject and the teachers has that huge responsibility for the students' learning process - that's simply not in my nephew's character to do that because he's in love with maths, rather than teaching per se and hopefully, after I could convince him that there are plenty of more suitable careers he can pursue with maths in mind.
8. I'm prepared to be proven wrong.
Finally, I'd like to finish on a humble note and say that I am more than willing to keep an open mind about the issue. After all, it is harsh to judge young people at the age of 15 - they are young, they deserve to have the time and space to learn more, to grow up, to experience the world and we should step back, let them do all that at their own pace before passing any kind of judgement. He does have a great home environment with loving parents - both my sister and my brother-in-law are very successful in their respective fields and you can't find better role models than that. Okay, my parents are in the picture as well as caregivers but I think their influence is thankfully rather limited. I would like you to think about some of the really good teachers you had in the past, do you think that any of them had all the skills they needed to become the great teachers they are at the age of 15? Probably not and that's the thing about growing up - we can keep learning new skills and keep improving ourselves and a boy at 15 is not the finished product, not by a long way. Would I be able to do the job I am doing today in corporate finance as a 15 year old? Of course not, I was far from ready at that age. So if my nephew really would like to become a teacher, he still has plenty of time to acquire the necessary skills to become good at teaching (on issues like handling unmotivated and disruptive students for example)and by all means, I'm willing to keep an open mind about that. Personally, I certainly didn't think I'd be working in corporate finance at the age of 15.
I think the problem is that nobody is talking to him about his future career as they deem he's too young now, that we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, he just needs to focus on the next test or exam he has to do. That was certainly my case when I was a 15 year old, we were somehow just expected to focus on our studies and the working world was just something so far away we didn't need to think about then. But there's no reason why one can't engage a 15 year old in a sensible conversation about his future career plans, after all, it would help him relate what he is studying at the moment to his future career. It is somewhat unfair to criticize my nephew for the choices he has made at that age, after all he is doing it without the adults in his life offering much guidance on the issue. The general consensus has been, "oh you can't tell a 15 year old what he can't do at that age, we want to be encouraging and tell him he can do whatever he wants and if he wants to become a teacher, then we will be supportive etc". I think there is a balance to be struck here, yes you want to support teenagers in their aspirations but more importantly, it is important to give them the information they need to make informed choices about their future and that can be a hard balance to strike for parents. I hope that in writing this piece, I have started a useful conversation not just for him but also for all my young readers who are thinking about the directions of their future careers. So, over to you. Please feel free to leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.
That's an article SG notes part 3: let's talk about becoming a maths teacher
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