YOUNG children from low-income families may be doing badly in school partly because of unnecessarily difficult words in Primary 1 and 2 maths textbooks.

For example, in My Pals Are Here, Maths 2nd Edition, 1A, the contents page has terms like 'number bonds' and 'ordinal numbers'. My wife and I hold postgraduate degrees, yet we were not sure what these terms meant. On page 29, the pupil is told to use a 'number train' to solve an addition problem. How many adults know what a number train is?

Logically, the maths vocabulary should go in tandem with that of English language textbooks.

We need excellent and experienced teachers - who teach effectively in simple language - to write primary school textbooks. By all means appoint highly qualified academics as consultants, but please keep them away from the textbook-writing process. For the sake of the kids.

Mickey Chiang

This article was first published in The Straits Times.