"Maths is jolly important for some people but it's a minority," he told BBC News Online.
"We pretend it's very important for everyone, but it's not. It's a very technological world and the average person is not going to need it.
"They need to know how to add up, but they won't need quadratic equations in the rest of their life.
"On the whole children don't see maths as relevant and many have learned all the maths they need by the age of 11."
Ignoring for the moment the use of "jolly"...
What is this person? A bored 12 year old? "Siiiir... If I'm never going to use maths outside of school why should I learn?"
Surely the point of maths beyond any vocational use (and school should never be purely about that) is to teach abstract logical thinking. There's no other subject that teaches it. Even science is practical rather than theoretical (as it should be at that stage).
Maths, in essence, gives a student a set of tools with which they can solve a range of problems. Those problems involve the selection of the correct tool and its correct use. On a superficial level people almost never do use quadratic equations in real life, but the skills learnt in solving them are used all the time, especially as, as this expert points out, we are living in a technological world. Saying maths is just about giving students the ability to add up is simply appalling.
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