Maths is stressful. That’s why it’s necessary

In the weeks since the Labour government came to power, we’ve gone from debating compulsory teaching of maths until age 18 to entertaining the idea that the times tables may be too stressful for children to memorise.

My resilience, my determination and my empathy are largely products of being bad at maths

When I was at school in Poland in the 2000s and 2010s, the response to such a suggestion would have been an eye-roll, or the blowing of a loud raspberry. The comment that ‘if you can’t have what you like, then you must learn to like what you have’ was commonplace, and maths was taken by everyone until age 18.

I was at the top of my class until, at age 15, I began to fall behind in maths. My school insisted on educating everyone as if they were a budding mathematician, so I ended up having to spend my evenings in remedial maths classes, stubbornly picking apart integrals 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.