The problem of maths.

 

I never cared for maths as a subject. I'm so uninterested in the subject that I soon forget how to do something. The basic maths - addition, subtraction, division, percentages, I have always retained. To this day, I don't even have to think about the 12 times table to answer it. It was knocked into me at primary school. We learned it by rote.  For what I need, the basic maths as stood me in good stead.

I think there is such a thing as a literate and a numerate mind and people are seldom good at both. I've always read and get more out of the printed word than anything else.

Does it really matter if you don't know the second law of thermodynamics? How many people could have solved the maths problem called the Poincaré Conjecture, or have even heard of it?

A friend told me recently that his son who is a headmaster, and likes mathematics, couldn't understand a book that he lent him by the historian Christopher Hill, called 'The World Turned Upside Down'. I've read the book and couldn't understand why he found it so difficult. I suppose if you have no grasp of English history and don't understand certain concepts about political theory, economics, and social class, you might find it difficult.

A person might be a maths expert but their education could be deficient in many other respects. Most people don't really think, but generalise, or think intuitively. They find thinking difficult. They follow their gut instincts or what to them, seems like common sense, and politicians know this.

The former American President, Ronald Reagan, once said that if "you're explaining, then you're losing". It might seem an interesting angle on political communication, but I can see what he's driving at.

Donald Trump knew how to work an audience with his 'Fake News' and 'Let's Make America Great Again', but so did Hitler and Mussolini.

The Canadian philosopher, Marshall McLuhan, had the best antidote for this when he said, "Education is ideally civil defence against media fallout."