[Fhsst-maths] Some Concerns about the Syllabus

[Sam Halliday]

hi everyone,

lately i have started to be concerned about the syllabus and the level 
we are writing to.

i've been tutoring "standard grade" maths here in scotland and i was 
comparing it to the South African syllabus. at face value it appears 
that the SA syllabus is way more hardcore than the UK system... but 
then i started thinking "this can't be... they are asking for stuff in 
the SA syllabus which we sometimes only do at university. something is 
wrong here!"

then i realised that perhaps the people who wrote the SA syllabus 
created their own terminology for things, against the maths community. 
this would *really* not surprise me, as the syllabus itself looks like 
it has been written by a non-specialist. as a specific example, i mean 
words like "prove"... when i read that, i think "ok, they want a proper 
proof". but in reality they probably mean "show that its true for the 
first few terms by inspection and then assume it holds for all".

so for that reason i'm thinking of editing a few chapters and really 
dumbing them down...  removing proofs and not deriving a bunch of 
equations. i think the content at the moment, in patterns for example, 
would scare a 16 year old away for maths forever!!!

if anyone who knows more about the SA syllabus and would like to 
comment.... *please* do! i'm just afraid that we are aiming our 
language too high. and i urge all contributors to do the same.

cheers,
Sam
--
Free High School Science Texts
  http://www.nongnu.org/fhsst/
Sam's Homepages
  https://fommil.homeunix.org/~samuel/
  http://www.ma.hw.ac.uk/~samuel/

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