A Global Mission

The UN has big goals — 17 of them across 169 targets. Written in 2016, these Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) tackle issues like tuberculosis and clean water and are meant to be achieved by 2030.

The fourth goal (SDG 4) is that by 2030, all girls and boys have access to quality education. This sounds ambitious and vague, but there are targets and indicators for progress. One (4.1.1) is that everyone hits something called a Minimum Proficiency Level (MPL) for their grade level.

SDG 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

What’s that mean? Let’s look at math. For grades 2 and 3, the MPL means you can name shapes. You can identify patterns. You can, within reason, divide, double and compare numbers under 100. By grade 5, you can skip count, use decimals, tell time, and read a bar graph. By grade 8, you can use exponents and do simple probability. (Unesco Institute for Statistics, 2022)

The Minimum Proficiency Levels are reachable. Unfortunately, six out of ten kids are not there in reading and math. Among the poorer countries, that’s 364 million students. (Lomborg 61) This goal is behind and on track to be fulfilled by 2056 — if that.

In his book Best Things First, Bjorn Lomborg states that SDG4 is achievable — in fact, the second most achievable one. One way to do this is to teach at the right level, using either high-tech methods (tablets and computers) or low-tech methods (classroom shuffling so you spend a portion of the day in a class at your level). These are tested methods that work.

But will kids even consume problems at their level if they don’t want to? Will it translate to substantive learning if you are clamped and resistant to the whole subject? It’s important to whet an appetite for math — perhaps by lowering the temperature and reducing the anxiety surrounding the subject.

Students are constantly on their guard against being conned into being interested.

— Nuthall, 2007