Just two months into Keir Starmer’s new Labour government, and we’ve gone from debating compulsory teaching of maths until age 18 to actually entertaining the idea — as proposed by the teaching unions to the Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson — that the times tables may be too stressful for children to memorise. 

When I was at school in Poland in the 2000s and 2010s, the response to such a suggestion would have been an eyeroll, or the blowing of a loud raspberry. The comment “if you can’t have what you like, then you must learn to like what you have” was commonplace, and maths was — and still is — taken by everyone until age 18. There was a toughness in adapting to circumstances in that world, which is now waning all over Europe, and must be revived.

I was the kid who was top of the class, until I became bad at maths. Out of nowhere, at age 15, I began to fall behind, and an identity which had been formed around academic achievement was challenged. The strategically smart thing to do would have been to do A-levels, drop maths completely, and sail on to Oxbridge under a set of flawless humanities grades.

Call me stubborn, but that’s way too easy — choosing the path that guarantees external markers of success with no internal struggle? That makes people weak — and being weak is not an idea which any thinking person should seriously entertain.

So instead, I did the International Baccalaureate, at a school which didn’t offer basic, studies-level maths, but insisted on educating everyone as if they were a budding mathematician. I absorbed English and History and German in my spare time, as a hobby, through reading books and watching documentaries and going to museums — three of my favourite things, which I don’t really consider “work”. The knowledge stuck, the writing flowed, my already bilingual brain absorbed words and facts and dates like a sponge, and the world was drawn in lines which made me feel comfortable in my mastery of it. 

Mathematics showed me that learning could be hard. The way it’s hard for students who aren’t the whiz kid, the way it’s hard for millions of people who aren’t academically gifted and don’t sail on to the best schools and universities, as I did. It taught me compassion, where playing to my talents would have taught me only hubris and superiority. It showed me that circumstances can be complex, and there are people who get left behind through no fault of their own. It showed me that there are people who are patient and kind, and will speed one along, and others who are harsh and inflexible, who will slow one down — and how to manage both. 

I spent my evenings in remedial maths classes in two languages, stubbornly picking apart integration and differentiation, calling my cousin — who was studying maths at university — for help, crossing out line after line of equations, and generally losing my mind. At school, the teacher took delight in calling me to the blackboard and pointing out to the entire class how unprepared I was. I learned to say, “I don’t know, I need help with this” which otherwise I would not have learned. I learned to feel embarrassed, and keep going anyway, until I stopped being embarrassed about anything at all. 

It was in no way to the advantage of the economy to teach me maths — the economy gains more from me when I play to my humanities strengths and specialise — but it was of considerable advantage to my development as a human being. My resilience, my determination, and my empathy are born of being bad at maths. If children are never made to do things at which they do not excel, they will grow up under the false impression that they are bad at nothing — and it will ruin them. 

If challenges are not imposed on children early in life … the challenges of later life will break them

It is possible that in an age where technology can count and calculate for us, the utility of teaching the times tables in schools is marginal, but as Artificial Intelligence advances, and the economy changes, we are ever more under a duty to train and develop ourselves — not for our utility to the economy, which may one day very well run itself, but for our usefulness as human beings, to ourselves and other people. 

If challenges are not imposed on children early in life, in a relatively safe environment, the challenges of later life will break them; the world will divide into those who seek out challenges voluntarily, who will succeed at life — and those who will sit afraid and complacent at home, who will fail, while others keep them afloat in their never-ending state of listlessness and depression.

Societies in which power is centralised, like China, will circumvent this problem by imposing a challenging curriculum from above, and telling their students to deal with it. Their children may be more resilient, and better equipped to deal with the real world, while British children slide further and further into a fantasy world, which will corrupt and diminish their ability to deal with reality. The ambitious ones will still choose to do hard things, as they always have — usually in fee-paying schools, in the case of Britain — while the rest fall behind, and take the future of the nation with them. It is our duty, as adults, not to let them.