I was asked to write this column as "readers would be interested to hear about one of the mysterious Bostock and Chandler team." Well there is nothing mysterious about me - I am a married woman with two daughters. I worked for several years as a fulltime maths teacher, then combined parttime teaching with writing, and now I do no regular teaching. I still think of myself as a maths teacher, but one who for the moment writes books for students.
I suspect that some of the mystery has been caused by the way our names appear on the books. When our first book was published we felt that initials were more appropriate for a textbook. We were of course aware that many people might assume that we were male, and although we did not intend to mislead, we were happy to allow people their misconceptions because we wanted the books to be judged on the merit of their contents and not prejudged by prejudice.
When prejudice is expressed about the ability of women to write maths books it can be very amusing. The last occasion was earlier this year when my older daughter's (male) maths teacher asserted that if a woman ever wrote a maths text it would be full of knitting patterns and recipes. It was an A'level maths class, and althought they did not use our texts, the teacher happened to be holding a copy of one of our mechanics books at the time. My daughter exploded in my defence, and that of woman kind in general. There is one recipe in one book for a very good chocolate cake, in ST(P) Mathematics 5C, but no knitting patterns!
The counter argument, put by many people is that our full names on the books would attract more readers than it would repel, and provide positive role models for girls, but I feel happy with the status quo.
How did it all start? I was teaching at Southgate Technical College, and because of changes in the style and content in A-level applied maths we were not happy about recommending any of the existing textbooks. Then a letter arrived from a new publisher, Stanley Thornes, asking for new authors, and Linda Bostock (my co-author) suggested that we should have a go at an A-level mechanics text. I was about to change to part-time work after the birth of my first daughter, and I jumped at the idea. My writing activities expanded to the point where the demands of writing, home, familt and teaching did not leave enough hours in the day, and it was teaching that went. I now do some coaching and the very occasional bit of supply, and spend about seven hours a day on writing.
A typical day starts with me getting my younger daughter out of the house in as organised a way as possible in time to catch a bus to school. My older daughter did not use any of our texts at school, but the younger one has just started to use the ST(P) series, so I am now getting a consumer's reaction at first hand, and it is very revealing; this particular consumer does not pull her punches.
The arrival of the post at 8.30 is the start of my working day. If it contains a letter from our editor, or a user with a query, then I try to deal with it first in consultation with my co-authors. We do welcome criticism and Stanley Thornes forward any correspondence to us that they can't deal with themselves. The rest of my time is spent on proofreading, drafting new material, looking at co-author's material, planning new books or editions of existing books.
Most of these jobs are team efforts, but the team varies: there are two of us concerned with A-level books, and four involved in the ST(P) Mathematics books, plus the publisher in both cases - her active encouragement and involvement is greatly appreciated. We meet to plan new books and decide who is to write which chapters. These are then circulated, criticised and redrafted until we are happy. When one of my chapters returns from this process I scan it quickly to see how much red it has accumulated. If it has a lot it can mean starting again, and I often put it to the bottom of the pile for later consideration.
Whatever my main activity for the day it nearly always involves lengthy telephone conversations. In particular writing for the National Curriculum must have generated considerable income for British Telecom. I usuallt myself targets for the week, but I rarely meet them. Working at home means the time spent can be arranged flexibly, but the downside is that I find it difficult to ignore domestic concerns, and even more difficult to turn down invitations.
The main distraction from productive work at the moment is a new computer on which I can investigate more powerful software. One program I have been playing with recently will have a profound effect on A-level maths before long. This is a symbolic algebra package, and it cannot be long before reasonably priced hand-held machines have the same capabilities.
The bulk of my working day ends at 4.30 when my daughter returns from school, but I usually try to fit in another two hours work in the evenings. I use this time to keep up to date with information on relevant subjects. Although we write books which are intended to be used for reference and practice by students, and much prefer to react to published syllabuses, I try to keep up with current information and trends.
Wearing my teacher's hat I am excited by some of the modular schemes available at A-level, particularly those which enable the modules to be examined throughout the course and points aggregated for a grade at the end. I have an open mind on course work. For applications that are inherently practical, for example statistics, it makes sense that they should be learnt, and at least partially examined in a practical context. The problem with examined coursework in pure mathematics is how to make it fair, not too time-consuming, and yet not trivial.
I think one of the major problems with A-level mathematics is that is too wide ranging. As I see it, most syllabuses combine a little mathematics done for its own sake with the skills and knowledge needed for its use as a tool in a wide variety of other subject areas. This makes for very large syllabuses and there just isn't time to cover the content in a two-year course and give adequate consideration to coursework.