Simon Jenkins must have had a deeply unpleasant experience of learning maths at school because he seems to have a pathological antipathy towards it (We are teaching children maths they will never use. Isn’t it better to help them speak fluently?, 16 October). I have no qualms with his insistence on the importance of oracy. But his argument breaks down with the claim that it is either oracy or maths, but not both. This is nonsense. Oracy and maths skills should exist side by side. Both contribute to a person’s ability to realise their full potential, and to employment opportunities.
Maths drives the understanding of the natural world and contributes vastly to the solutions of problems that humanity needs to solve to exist. It is fundamental to science and technology, health and medicine, communications, the study of the Earth, finance and economics, distribution of resources and supply chains, architecture, warfare, and much else besides.
