That deeply unpleasant woman, Carol Vorderman, has seen fit to publicise her views on mathematics teaching. Apparently she believes, or says she believes, that everybody in school should study maths until the age of eighteen. On behalf of my sixteen-year-old self (I was one once, though admittedly this was a long time ago) I shuddered at this suggestion. Strangely enough, I have retained the greater part of the mathematics I struggled with so long ago.
But why should we take the opinions of a TV presenter seriously? And why, in particular, should we pay heed to Vorderman? Her doubtful claim to fame is based on her time as front woman of Countdown, a daytime TV show, but I remember her better as the front woman for a loan company's advertisements. Her job was to give this usurer some kind of credence, and to pretend that the extortionate repayment rates added up.
In the magazine-based predecessor to Stray Blogs, Stray Thoughts, I identified Vorderman as one of the three most ill-matched people to jobs. The others were Tony Blair as 'peace ambassador' in the Middle East and Jeffrey Archer as a 'TV jurist'. Would we take anything they said seriously? I hope not.
Monday 8 August 2011
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I'd never heard of this Vorderman person over here so I looked her up on the Internet. Most of the things I found were about her figure. She likes to show it off. I don't think that should disqualify her from making comments any more than being on TV (and I don't know about 'deeply unpleasant' - what's she ever done to you) but she gets about, doesn't she?
ReplyDeleteSPAMMY SAM
Typical. All these two are concerned about is whether she's 'pleasant' and has a good figure. Isn't a woman entitled to have opinions?
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