Solving problems

Genuine problem solving and rote learning to pass exams are two very different things

Onuora Abuah | KEY academy contributor

I spent twelve years teaching mathematics at a fee-paying secondary school in the UK. I studied International Relations at university but dropped out to pursue a career as an actor and screenwriter. I fell into teaching as a means to survive while I attended auditions and wrote scripts. Within a year of my arrival, I was tasked with preparing the next set of students for their GCSE (end of secondary school) exams, two years since a Maths exam had been sat in the school. I quickly discovered something that wasn’t apparent to me when I did my own GCSE nearly 20 years ago. Examination Boards tend to have a relaxed approach when it comes to setting exam questions, often amending and renumbering questions from the previous year. This, certainly, allowed me to anticipate the types of questions one would expect, however, I still had to retrain, and equally learn some math topics/modules from when I was at school. As an unqualified teacher with a C grade in IGCSE Maths, I felt more at ease to lead my class into their exams.

I taught in the Senior School at an All-Boys Hasidic (Orthodox) Jewish school in London, whose students spend from 8am - 6pm attending various religious and ‘secular’ studies. The school was established in the 1940s as a community school for the growing Jewish immigrant population in the area. UK law mandates all schools, regardless of faith, to provide their students with a minimum of 2.5 hours of core subjects (English, Maths, Science and History) teaching per day. The majority of my student’s parents were initially uninterested in their child’s secular education . They were more concerned with their sons attending the best Yeshiva (Religious Finishing School) than about them going onto a traditional sixth form or higher educational systems. Where UK Students sat their GCSEs in the fifth and final year of secondary school, our students sat it in the fourth year.

At the time, less than 5% of GCSE candidates went on to study A-levels and even less went on to University. The expectation was for these young men to marry “well” and continue in their family’s business and/or become a Rabbi. Students and parents alike saw little value in understanding the quadratic formula or the Pythagoras theorem. They did, however, show a keen interest in understanding numeracy as it pertained to wealth accumulation. In spite of all this, and my non-existent teaching experience, 100% of my 10 students achieved A* — C grades at GCSE at the end of my first year, exceeding even my own expectations. A new Headmaster took control of the school a year later, instantly hired new personnel, and created an ethos of hard work and discipline the school hadn’t seen for years. With the school’s new focus and a years more experience, 90% of my students achieved A* — B grades at GCSE and for the next 8 years, my students averaged 87% percent grades A* — C. The reasons for this, I hope will become clearer as you read on.

My school’s Rabbi discouraged our students from having access to television, the Internet and even picture books. I, therefore, struggled to find everyday examples they could relate to but soon discovered we had a common interest. Football! Even the less able students understood the basic concept of kicking a ball into a net within a rectangular boundary and as often as possible, I used the game to illustrate mathematical concepts. For example, when learning about distance, speed and time, we’d get a ball, move the desks, measure distances and the average speed of the ball to see if we can ‘time’ the perfect pass from one student to another. We would do something similar using three players (students) when learning Trigonometry. When they learned to interpret vectors, I’d show them the board game ‘Snakes and Ladders’. We would study the Examiners Report as a stand alone module so that students were aware of the requirements for each exam question. There always seemed to be a ‘common sense’ way to explain each topic.

For years I repeated the phrases “Maths is life” and “The exam is for idiots.” I soon became popular amongst students and parents. The school’s success rate at exams saw enrollment increase and our classrooms rising from 12 to 23 students on average, over the next ten years. This was not only down to me but the Headmaster’s direction and my fellow colleagues also achieving better results. The ‘good teacher’ moniker was placed on me and parents began pushing their kids to achieve good grades in general. However, the larger numbers meant there was increasingly less time to play through passes, debate car versus plane travel times or focus on less academically-able individuals.

In my opinion, true success for any student in any school, is down to the individual identifying an area (subject) of interest, relating it to an area of need in their life or society and (maybe less so) a charismatic or open minded co-learner (not teacher). This can be seen in the film The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind which depicts the life of Malawian teenager William Kamkwamba. He designed and erected windmills on his father’s farm to help improve agricultural outputs during the worst dry season in the country for 20 years. William was expelled from school due to unpaid tuition fees despite showing proficiency in solar energy and conducting electricity using unused metal from the local scrap yard. His area of interest may be ‘science’ but I’m certain that constructing windmills was not a module in his school’s curriculum. William found something he was interested in, studied it and put it into practical terms for all to to see and benefit from. His windmill earned him a scholarship, admission to an Ivy League School and an invitation to the TED stage. Had the famine not occurred, he almost certainly would not have excelled in his specific field of interest with such innovation. All he needed was the ability to read, calculate and a desire to solve a problem. The latter has long since disappeared from mainstream western education.

For 10,000 years, the ancient Nile Valley cultures of Kemet, Kush and Meroë, created a ‘Priest Class’ who taught of the duality between the spiritual elements (i.e. The Periodic Table) and tangible expressions in construction. Construction by definition, requires mathematics, art, an imagination and the desire to find a solution to a problem. The few who studied in these Sacred Schools were not bound by a 3, 6 or 8 year grade cycle but a more limitless time period (up to 40 years). They would harness the spiritual and the so-called ‘academic’ into some form of masonry. It is this approach to education that allows us to still see 7000+ year old structures like the Great Pyramids of Giza and the Temple of Hatshepsut which was hune out of a mountain in Nubia.

Throughout Africa’s history, this same desire to solve problems has led to the world’s innovations. 35,000 years ago in Congo, women came up with a numerical system to monitor their monthly cycles using the Ishango and Lebombo bones. The world’s first written script, the Medu Neter (Hieroglyphics) was designed for people to send messages to one another. On the banks of the Niger River, the Dogon people of Mali stood on clear land and plotted the distance to the star, Sirius B, one thousand years before Europeans developed a telescope that could see it. This is the education of the future. One of innovation, requiring us to find solutions to everyday needs.

As our modern world shifts from a job focus to an entrepreneurial focus, this ability to solve problems becomes a necessity for young minds. A new approach has to be adopted by both primary and secondary institutions, if we are to have job creators rather than job seekers. As technology siphons off more and more work from human beings, the promise of a career for our children seems even more bleak. The UK government has turned its old BBC headquarters in White City into a tech hub for young creative minds of all backgrounds. There, they are guided and encouraged to solve problems which inspire them, free from a traditional school setting. If students spend every twelve months preparing for and sitting generic exams based on areas of studies not selected by them, the inevitable outcome is a nation of ‘crammers’ not innovators. Identifying areas of interest is crucial during the mandatory school ages (4–16) if we are to truly replace the repetitive cycle of modern educational institutions. My focus as a parent is to enable my children to fully achieve literacy and numeracy, that they develop critical thinking (common sense) and identify where their interests lie. Surely, this is education at its essence.

Written by Onuora Abuah (KEY academy contributor)