Why we cannot afford to let our children opt out of numbers
I like Prof Adrian Saville. He is one of those rare economists who can make a spreadsheet feel like a sermon. If I were ever president of Mzansi, he’d be in my Cabinet, or at the very least, permanently on speed-dial to the Presidency. He recently co-wrote a piece with Isaah Mhlanga, Chief Economist at RMB, and Dr Sizwe Nxasana, my role model, founder of Future Nation Schools and Sifiso Learning Group, arguing that South Africa’s weak maths pipeline isn’t only an education story. It’s an economic one.
Their point, stripped down: we treat mathematics as a school subject when we should be treating it as national infrastructure. Countries that invest seriously in mathematical sciences see it show up in GDP, in productivity, in jobs. South Africa, by contrast, quietly steers children away from mathematics and calls it a kindness. It isn’t. It’s a slow bleed on the economy, and on the individual futures inside it.
Reading it, I found myself back in a Khayelitsha classroom.
A Bantu education school, and a strange kind of grace
I went to Luhlaza Senior Secondary in Khayelitsha, a Bantu Education school that was, at the time, the best black school in the Western Cape. Good teachers, oddly enough under a principal named Mr de Klerk, a strict white Afrikaner who somehow kept standards high. Rumour had it that a few of our teachers doubled as National Party intelligence officers, sent to watch us as much as teach us. If they were spies, they were at least competent ones, they taught their subjects properly.
We were pushed toward Mathematics, Higher Grade or Standard Grade, never Mathematical Literacy. I passed with a C. Not a star pupil. Just good enough, and mostly lazy about it.
Then I got to UCT to study commerce, and two things happened that changed the trajectory of my life.
Two men, one subject, and the moment everything shifted
The first was my Maths 1 lecturer, a Black statistician, engineer and mathematician, Professor Mbulaheni Nthangeni, in 2004 he was elected President of the South African Statistical Association (SASA), making him the first black president of the association in its 50 years of existence. He was the only one across all my modules that year, who loved the subject so openly, it was contagious. I hadn’t known, until I sat in his lectures, that someone who looked like me could stand at the front of a UCT theatre and command a room with pure competence. He absorbed the racism thrown at him by white students and parents with a patience I still think about. He would say to me “yes you can“, long before Obama used it as his election slogan. Watching him work made me want to work harder. Representation isn’t an abstraction, it is a very literal permission slip.
The second was Prof Tim Dunne, teaching Statistics 101F, soft spoken, silver-bearded, who looked like he moonlighted as a priest. On day one he told us Chapters 1 to 8 were “high school revision” and wouldn’t be covered, except our first two assignments were built entirely on them. My school had never touched those chapters. Only the Model C and private school kids had. I found the courage to tell him. And instead of shrugging, he offered me an hour with him every morning before lectures, for as long as it took, on one condition: I show up, do the work, and commit to majoring in the subject. He taught me the same concept five or six different ways until it landed. He refused to let me memorise formulas, he made me understand them.
Two men, teaching numbers subjects, quietly decided I was worth the extra hour, extra effort, extra belief. Without them, I do not believe I would have majored in Numbers.
I left UCT with a degree that opened doors most people around me didn’t even know existed, data analytics, quantitative research, market research. Doors that are, frankly, still understaffed today.
Why this isn’t an argument against the Humanities
I want to be precise here, because it would be easy to hear this as maths-supremacy. It isn’t. Law, psychology, anthropology, sociology, musicology, design, education, the arts, these disciplines carry the moral imagination, the storytelling, the meaning-making that a country needs just as much as it needs engineers. My most memorable course at varsity was Philosophy, Introduction to Logic. Humanities graduates are not the problem. A society that produced only actuaries and computer scientists who cannot philosophise, would be a fairly grim place to live. The issue is narrower and more specific: many children are being moved out of Pure Mathematics into Mathematical Literacy for the wrong reasons, not because their gifts genuinely point toward the humanities, but because Pure Maths feels hard and Maths Lit feels like relief. That decision, made at fifteen or sixteen, quietly closes doors the child doesn’t yet know exist.
The one-way valve nobody tells parents about
Here is the part of the system that deserves far more attention than it gets: dropping from Pure Maths to Maths Lit is easy, almost administrative. Going the other way is close to impossible. A child can move down in Grade 11 without much friction. Almost nobody moves back up. That asymmetry means the decision isn’t really “which subject suits my child”, it’s “which faculties, jobs, will still be open to my child at eighteen.” Maths Lit is a respectable, legitimate route into Law, the Arts, Education, and parts of Business. But it closes the gate on Engineering, Medicine, Physics, Actuarial Science, Computer Science, and Chartered Accountancy, permanently, before the child is old enough to know if that’s a door they’d have wanted.
The labour market backs this up starkly.
Graduates from Pure Maths-dependent fields face near-zero structural unemployment, earning a premium that is 2 to 3x more than humanities, with corporates recruiting them before final year is even done. Meanwhile, general humanities and business graduates face an unemployment rate hovering around 10%, competing against a genuine oversupply for a shrinking pool of entry-level roles. Both paths can lead to good lives. But one path currently has far more insurance built into it. If you grew up poor, the insurance is worth more than gold.
The Myths we need to retire: “ eg. some kids just don’t have a maths brain, iMaths inzima – Maths is difficult. Yho! I am scared of Maths“.
🧠 The “Maths Brain” Myth:
Myth: People are born with a natural talent for maths, and if you do not have it, you will never be good at it.
The Reality: Brains are highly adaptable. Mathematical skill grows through practice, effective strategy, and effort, not genetics.
♀️ The Gender Myth:
Myth: Boys are naturally better at maths and science, while girls excel at languages and art.
The Reality: Decades of research show no innate difference in mathematical ability between genders. Performance differences stem from societal expectations and stereotypes.
⏱️ The Speed Myth:
Myth: Being good at maths means you can calculate answers instantly in your head.
The Reality: Deep mathematical thinking requires logic, creativity, and time. Many brilliant mathematicians are actually slow, cautious thinkers.
🔏 The Rigid Formula Myth:
Myth: There is only one correct way to solve a mathematical problem.
The Reality: Maths is highly flexible. There are often multiple valid methods to reach a correct solution, and exploring different paths builds stronger understanding.
❌ The Error Myth:
Myth: Making a mistake means you are bad at maths.
The Reality: Mistakes are essential for learning. Testing incorrect assumptions actually strengthens neural pathways and deepens conceptual comprehension.
🧮 The Memorisation Myth:
Myth: Maths is purely about memorising formulas, multiplication tables, and rules.
The Reality: Rote memorisation without context leads to confusion. True maths competency is about understanding patterns, connections, and logic.
These beliefs are doing the most damage in living rooms across the country, and they are largely untrue. In Japan, Singapore, and China, struggling with maths is read as a sign that a student hasn’t yet put in enough deliberate practice, not as a verdict on their intelligence. Carol Dweck’s research on growth mindset backs this up: students who believe ability is built through effort consistently outperform those who believe it’s fixed. Maths is also cumulative in a way few other subjects are. A 40% rarely means a child lacks the capacity for the next chapter. It usually means there’s a gap from two years back that was never repaired, quietly compounding ever since. It is always better for your child to have a C or D in Pure Math, than an A in Maths Lit.
When Maths Lit genuinely is the right call
None of this means Pure Maths should be defended at all costs, in every case. There are real, legitimate reasons to move a child across:
Legitimate reasons to move to Maths Lit
Marks are consistently below 30–40% despite real effort, tutoring, and time and the subject risks costing the matric Bachelor’s pass altogether.
Pure Maths is consuming most of the study week and dragging every other subject down with it. The child has a clear, well-tested talent elsewhere, and the target degree accepts an elevated Maths Lit mark.
These are tactical decisions, made deliberately, with eyes open. What I’m arguing against is the default, reflexive move, the one made because a subject feels stressful rather than because a door is genuinely wrong for this particular child.
What I’d ask of parents
Before signing that subject-change form, treat it as an execution problem, not an intelligence verdict. Ask whether the real issue is effort, foundational gaps, or teaching, all fixable, before concluding it’s aptitude, which usually isn’t the true diagnosis at all.
I was a C-student who fell into two people willing to give an extra hour. That hour rerouted an entire life. Most children won’t have a Prof Dunne knocking on their door. But they might have a parent willing to hold the line one more year, one more term, before deciding the door should close.
Maths matters, not instead of the Humanities, but alongside them, as one more door we shouldn’t close before a child is old enough to know what’s on the other side of it.
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Dr. Mzamo Masito
Between Thoughts- Intellectual Musings
Where the uncomfortable questions get a seat at the table.
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