It all adds up
The “big society” meets globalisation
in online maths lessons
Nov 18th 2010
PAMPERED middle-class children, both British and American, make up a good slice of Munish Kumar’s income as an online mathematics tutor, linked by the internet to pupils thousands of miles from his workplace in northern India. Pampered middle-class kids are few and far between on the Doddington estate in south London, a public housing complex known locally for knife crime and dogfights. Yet community activists on the Doddington estate—striving to keep young residents off the streets and away from gangs—think online lessons from India could help children who are on the point of giving up on maths, a vital part of their education.
Mr Kumar works for a college in Ludhiana, a manufacturing hub of the Punjab. From his cubicle, equipped with an interactive blackboard and audio headset, he has an overview of the maths elements of the British national curriculum and its American equivalent, as well as the relative diligence of British and American children. The British are sparkier and more “keen to learn” than American pupils, he says. Alas, kids from both those rich countries pale besides their peers in India, who are both harder working and expected to master tougher topics at a younger age. This, Mr Kumar suggests, is only natural: “In India, you know if you want to survive you have to study.”
Actually, the link between maths and survival is obvious to some in Britain too. Every day, Marie Hanson, a single mother who runs a community project on the Doddington estate, sees the harm caused to clients who decided the subject was beyond them at school. When teenage boys cannot read or have trouble with numbers, she says, it makes them “angry inside”. The single mothers who come to her centre have a different problem: their debilitating lack of confidence with arithmetic hampers their judgment and prospects. Perhaps surprisingly to outsiders, she says her group, S.T.O.R.M. Empowerment, receives offers of jobs for young women “all the time”. But many clients take a lot of convincing that employment will leave them better off than benefits. The welfare system is complex, but the real problem is simpler: many left school unable to manage their personal finances.
The group already runs numeracy classes for adults, and works closely with local schools on teaching younger residents of the estate. Ms Hanson was impressed by an experiment with online, one-on-one maths tutoring. It was organised by BrightSpark, a firm which sells online lessons from Mr Kumar and his Indian colleagues to clients in Britain at a cost of £12 ($19) an hour.
“You have to see it to believe it,” says Ms Hanson, recalling children squabbling for a turn solving sums online. They are transported into their “own little world”, where they aren’t embarrassed to make mistakes. Above all, they find anything to do with computers exciting. Ms Hanson is seeking funds for a bigger trial project, offering online maths to 30 selected children.
At first glance, this intercontinental initiative might seem an odd fit with the “Big Society” ethos that is in vogue in government circles, with its stress on local community activism. But distance matters little to today’s children, says Rebecca Stacey, assistant head at Ashmount Primary, a north London school which already uses BrightSpark to help both gifted and struggling ten and 11-year-olds. Many pupils have relatives on far-flung continents, and use Skype for family chats, she notes: for them, the world is already local.
The Economits
Mr Kumar works for a college in Ludhiana, a manufacturing hub of the Punjab. From his cubicle, equipped with an interactive blackboard and audio headset, he has an overview of the maths elements of the British national curriculum and its American equivalent, as well as the relative diligence of British and American children. The British are sparkier and more “keen to learn” than American pupils, he says. Alas, kids from both those rich countries pale besides their peers in India, who are both harder working and expected to master tougher topics at a younger age. This, Mr Kumar suggests, is only natural: “In India, you know if you want to survive you have to study.”
Actually, the link between maths and survival is obvious to some in Britain too. Every day, Marie Hanson, a single mother who runs a community project on the Doddington estate, sees the harm caused to clients who decided the subject was beyond them at school. When teenage boys cannot read or have trouble with numbers, she says, it makes them “angry inside”. The single mothers who come to her centre have a different problem: their debilitating lack of confidence with arithmetic hampers their judgment and prospects. Perhaps surprisingly to outsiders, she says her group, S.T.O.R.M. Empowerment, receives offers of jobs for young women “all the time”. But many clients take a lot of convincing that employment will leave them better off than benefits. The welfare system is complex, but the real problem is simpler: many left school unable to manage their personal finances.
The group already runs numeracy classes for adults, and works closely with local schools on teaching younger residents of the estate. Ms Hanson was impressed by an experiment with online, one-on-one maths tutoring. It was organised by BrightSpark, a firm which sells online lessons from Mr Kumar and his Indian colleagues to clients in Britain at a cost of £12 ($19) an hour.
“You have to see it to believe it,” says Ms Hanson, recalling children squabbling for a turn solving sums online. They are transported into their “own little world”, where they aren’t embarrassed to make mistakes. Above all, they find anything to do with computers exciting. Ms Hanson is seeking funds for a bigger trial project, offering online maths to 30 selected children.
At first glance, this intercontinental initiative might seem an odd fit with the “Big Society” ethos that is in vogue in government circles, with its stress on local community activism. But distance matters little to today’s children, says Rebecca Stacey, assistant head at Ashmount Primary, a north London school which already uses BrightSpark to help both gifted and struggling ten and 11-year-olds. Many pupils have relatives on far-flung continents, and use Skype for family chats, she notes: for them, the world is already local.
The Economits
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