The Sunday Times - UK (2022-02-13

The Sunday Times February 13, 2022 21

NEWS REVIEW

speed and leads to a growing

sense of a particular skill

becoming second nature.

Smaller chunks of study over

a longer period of time are

more effective than the

opposite, and help with

maths anxiety before exams.

Finally, find the right

resources — of which there

are many. I have my own

charity, Dr Frost Learning,

with an award-winning

website full of ideas and help.

YouTube is full of clearly

worked examples of maths

problems. Mix up where you

get your practice questions

from. Some resources, such

as Khan Academy, provide

automatic feedback; Times

Tables Rock Stars turns maths

into a fun computer game.

Because maths should be fun,

not something to fear.

Jamie Frost is a maths teacher

at Tiffin School in Kingston

upon Thames. He was named a

Covid Hero by the Global

Teacher Prize in 2020.

drfrostmaths.com

where feedback about a

pupil’s underperformance is

met with declarations from

Mum or Dad of their own lack

of mathematical prowess.

This perpetuates a cycle:

condoning poor maths

performance leads to maths

anxiety, and maths anxiety

leads to poor performance.

In my own adventures,

maths has helped me code

robots and formed the basis

of my teaching career. I once

used the harmonic series to

help John Lewis find out how

many packets of London

Olympics trading cards

people would need to buy on

average to collect the full set.

Last week I watched a

YouTuber use university-level

maths to solve any Wordle

puzzle. But good numeracy is

fundamental to our everyday

life, and nobody is a “maths

person” or a “non maths

person”.

Practice, as with most

things, is the key — it builds

resilience and confidence,

improves recall, increases

subtraction. Mental fluency,

while coming faster to some,

stems from practice rather

than intelligence. As children

progress to topics that build

on this, how they internalise

concepts is critical to

“seeing” the maths, rather

than just doing it.

The different ways

different teachers explain

things can stop progress. The

best method is to build

understanding using skills the

pupil has already mastered,

rather than to mindlessly

apply rules. Neurologists and

linguists have long said that

our brains are intrinsically

wired to understand

language, and I believe that

mathematics can be viewed

in the same way — if we take it

stage by stage.

One significant problem is

cultural attitudes, including

the common perception

that maths isn’t needed in

daily life. “I’m more of a

humanities person” is a

depressing line I commonly

hear at parents’ evenings,

Jamie Frost says

teachers must

ensure children

understand a

concept before

they move onto

the next one

haven’t grasped the previous

one. A common source of

anxiety is lack of confidence

in the underlying skills that a

more difficult topic requires.

The most fundamental

building block is core

numeracy: number bonds,

times tables and mental

strategies for addition and

Cambridge, more than three

quarters of children

experiencing maths anxiety

were at least normal

achievers more generally.

And it is surmountable.

I’m a maths teacher. At the

start of my career I taught a

class of 13 for a month. Every

pupil was on the School

Action Plus register for

learning and emotional

needs. All had written off

maths. One, on the verge of

permanent exclusion,

miraculously consented to

come back weekly after

school for a one-to-one

session. We went back to

basics, first building up some

mental fluency, and

progressed from there.

It would be wonderful if

every child could have one-

on-one tuition, or at least if

their teacher could be

brilliant. But we can all try to

understand better the

essence of learning maths. It

is a heavily scaffolded

discipline: you can’t progress

to the next concept if you

Stressed by sums? Here’s my formula for factoring out maths anxiety

mathematical ability is seen

as the main cause; too much

homework and a lack of help

from parents are also

mentioned.

And there’s bad news close

to home. “England’s results

suggest that our secondary

pupils are among the most

seriously affected by maths

anxiety,” said Professor

Margaret Brown, president of

the Maths Anxiety Trust. So

perhaps it’s no coincidence

that, according to a report by

National Numeracy, nearly

half the working-age

population has the numeracy

skills expected of a primary

school child. What is going

wrong — and what can we do

about it?

Maths anxiety is a

debilitating emotional

reaction. Sufferers may

experience mild tension; they

may avoid situations

involving the use of numbers.

It is not, to be clear, a

reflection of ability. In a study

by the Centre for

Neuroscience in Education at

Pupils — and their

parents — are being

held back by a fear of

numbers. To build

confidence, take it

step by step, says

teacher Jamie Frost

D

oes the mention of

maths bring on school

flashbacks, your pulse

quickening in panic as

you stare at the

gobbledegook symbols

behind the teacher? Maybe

you get the sweats when

splitting a restaurant bill. If

so, you could be suffering

from maths anxiety.

It is a problem for pupils

across the world, holding

them back and hampering

their chances of

mathematical success,

according to a report from

the University of Western

Ontario in Canada. The study,

the largest of its kind, says a

lack of trust in a teacher’s

Customers come to the studio with a

selection of ideas they’ve researched on

Instagram or Pinterest, there is a consul-

tation and a bespoke design is drawn up.

Many come for particular tattooists, who

often have Instagram followers in the

thousands.

As the industry has exploded, artists

have become highly specialised in one

style or technique, such as hyperrealism,

intricate fine lines or big block designs.

People will come from far and wide to

reach them. Cally-Jo, 32, an Insta-famous

fine-art graduate from Southampton, has

228,000 followers and has been flown to

the Dominican Republic to tattoo the

singer Rihanna’s hand.

Tattoo trends change. And fast. The

American Mark Mahoney, a tattoo super-

star in his sixties who began his career

tattooing Hell’s Angels and has since left

his mark on Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie,

Adele and David Beckham, groaned in a

recent interview that he was witnessing a

tattoo trend for “these little outdoorsy

scenes — pine trees, lakeside things, little

f***ing cabins”.

At the moment Turley says he is seeing

a lot of delicate drawings of single flowers

or words and names. One thing is clear:

the days of picking an anchor, skull and

crossbones or — ahem — swallow from

the tattooist’s wall are long behind us.

As are the low prices. The base rate for

a small design at Vagabond is £80, while a

palm-size tattoo will cost about £200 —

average for the industry. A “piece” that

takes several day-long sessions of drilling

can cost between £3,000 and £5,000.

Ouch.

The Office for National Statistics

doesn’t use tattoos as a measure of infla-

tion, but perhaps it should. One Vaga-

bond customer, 29-year-old Connor Jack-

son from Essex, says that he used to pay

his favourite tattooist £60 a pop, and

inflation has seen that figure rise to about

£100 in recent years.

Despite the boom in the trade, there is

no official qualification or diploma for

anyone wishing to make a living out of

NEWS REVIEW

Is it body art or body kitsch? Either way, business is

booming in high street tattoo parlours, with all walks

of life getting inked. When did Britain get so obsessed

by going under the needle, asks Madeleine Spence

I

t looks more like a luxury spa than

a heavy-metal den of iniquity. On

Hackney Road, east London, sand-

wiched between a beardy barber’s

and a café, is the Vagabond tattoo

studio. A stream of customers

flows in and out: a woman in yoga

leggings waiting to engrave her

grandmother’s name on her shoul-

der, a professional-looking chap

with his wrist wrapped in cling film, and

a panicked girl who has just fled another

parlour down the road with a freshly

carved flower on her arm that she des-

perately wants fixed. “It looks like a child

has done it!” she yelps.

It is a hive of activity, with needles

buzzing in the background, although

according to Adam Turley, the manager,

this is a relatively quiet afternoon. With

ten tattoo artists on rotation, for the past

couple of years they’ve served a near-

constant stream of Britons looking to get

inked. Excluding pandemic interrup-

tions, they see 60-70 customers a week.

The publication of a new book on the

subject has set off a colourful row. The

Philosophy of Tattoos is an attempt by

John Miller, a lecturer in 19th-century lit-

erature at Sheffield University, to intel-

lectualise why we get inked. One of its

reviewers, Theodore Dalrymple in The

Critic, was not a fan — of the book, or tats

in general. “It is now customary when

writing of tattoos to call them body art,

though a much better term would be

body kitsch,” he sniped.

The Times columnist Melanie Phillips

weighed in last week, citing a Mumsnet

commenter who lamented her daugh-

ter’s decision to get a “sleeve” of tattoos

covering her arm as “bloody awful”.

Phillips perhaps went a little too far when

she wrote that the sight of a tattoo made

her feel physically sick. Others advised

her not to judge until she had some skin

in the game.

According to Turley, 32, the Mumsnet

moaner is out of touch: it’s not just soci-

ety’s rebels but its respectable members

who are being drawn on these days. As

more people take the permanent plunge,

what used to be considered the symbol

of a seamy underworld, the preserve of

ex-navy men and football hooligans,

has leapt into the mainstream and onto

our bodies. How did Britain become a

tattoo nation?

In the 1980s less than a fifth of the pop-

ulation had a tattoo, now a quarter of us

have at least one, says Viren Swami, pro-

fessor of social psychology at Anglia

Ruskin University. According to a Which?

survey of the high street, the number of

tattoo parlours went up 44 per cent

between 2014 and 2019, while other less

essential services such as bookshops and

computer stores closed down in droves.

It’s an obvious point, but you can’t get a

tattoo over the internet.

“We have lawyers, we’ve got police

officers, we have NHS doctors,” says

Turley. One of his best repeat customers

is a GP. “Professionals are more open to it

now. You don’t feel like your law firm is

going to chuck you out, or your hospital

is going to say you can’t work.”

Turley’s clean, well-lit parlour with a

glass front is a world away from the

single-room backstreet den I wandered

into 11 years ago and walked out of with a

swallow tattoo, as advertised on the wall.

For about £30 there was little fanfare or

hand-holding, and I recall a strong smell

of alcohol, which was either disinfectant

or the profoundly hungover-looking gent

holding the needle. Ten minutes after I

first saw the little bird, it was tattooed on

my ankle for good, with no time to regret

it. Well, just the following decade.

A

t Vagabond, on the contrary, the

smell of caramel incense wafts

about and Turley, from Chelten-

ham, is professional, cool and reas-

suring. His shop uses only vegan

ink. “It fits in with our ethos, and it’s a fre-

quently asked question from our custom-

ers,” says Turley, revealing an important

insight into the demographic of today’s

tattoo seekers. (According to Peta, the

animal-rights activists, non-vegan ink

may contain bone char, glycerine from

animal fat, gelatine from carcasses and

shellac from beetles.)

NATION

branding fellow humans, although the

average salary of a tattoo artist is not to

be sniffed at — about £41,000 a year.

However skilled they are, make sure

you know what you want. Having a tattoo

removed, a process that uses a laser to

blast the pigments out of the skin, is

pricey. According to Dr Daron Seukeran,

a consultant dermatologist at the derma-

tology group Sk:n, it costs about £60 a

treatment and generally takes up to four

sessions.

“There was, at one time, people put-

ting people’s names on their skin, and

then the relationship would break down

suddenly,” he says. Seukeran has also

reversed many a thick black band around

upper arms, a trend in the 2010s, as well

as impulsive neck and face decorations.

The change that has taken place in the

industry is no better illustrated than by

Frank Carter, former frontman of the

hardcore punk band Gallows. With well

over 100 tattoos stretching from knuck-

les to neck, Carter, 37, has been at it for

20 years. When he started learning the

art, “it was for outsiders. They were

underdogs; they were

pirates,” he says,

recalling how he

feared getting his fin-

gers broken by some

of the old hands for

trying to muscle in

on the game. “I

was terrified.”

Now Carter

owns the Rose of

Mercy parlour

in Hoxton, east

London, which is

described on its website as “a welcom-

ing, creative safe place for tattooers,

artists and clients of all genders, ages,

races and religions”. His aim is to find

aspiring artists and illustrators, he says,

and teach them how to work on skin.

So what changed? The short answer is:

blame David Beckham. “Once he gets a

tattoo, he kind of breaks down a lot of old

barriers of who is tattooed and who can

be tattooed,” Swami says of the foot-

balling heart-throb who started a long

love affair with the tattoo gun in 1999.

Whereas prisoners, gang members and

bikers revelled in allying themselves with

their community through ink, Golden

Balls pushed the art into the mainstream.

It became acceptable, maybe even pro-

found, to have the name of one’s child

tattooed in gothic script across one’s

lower back.

Now even the silver-haired and the

sensible are letting their bodies become

canvasses for some body art. As she

turned 81, Dame Judi Dench had “Carpe

diem” scrawled on her wrist. Sir Ian

McKellen was 62 when he got the word

“nine” in Lord of the Rings Elvish on his

shoulder. David Dimbleby has a scorpion

on his right shoulder — which he got done

at Vagabond in 2013, aged 75.

The former Newsnight presenter Evan

Davis was snapped by the paps with a

sizeable shoulder tattoo peeking out of

his T-shirt. And Samantha Cameron, the

wife of the former prime minister, has an

innocuous dolphin on her ankle.

It’s not just about emulating the rich

and beautiful, however, Swami says. Nor

is it about destroying the sacred temple

of the body.

“I think this is where her [Phillips’s]

argument really breaks down,” Swami

explains. “I think it’s really dismissive to

say to someone that you’re only getting

tattooed because you want to desecrate

your body.”

He argues that tattoos can be deeply

psychologically powerful, an investment

in the body, a way to come to terms with

who we are and even a way to reclaim the

physical self. He uses the example of

women who have been victims of domes-

tic violence getting tattooed as a way to

express their agency.

So, I ask Turley, if I’m going to get

another one, what is the best tattoo to go

for? What won’t be regrettable a few

years down the line?

He assures me I’m asking the wrong

person. “Tattooists love all tattoos, even

the crap ones. We love terrible tattoos,”

he says. Perhaps my swallow isn’t so bad

after all.

Adam Turley charges from £80

to £5,000 for a design. Below,

Sir Ian McKellen, the celebrity

tattooist Cally-Jo and David Beckham

We have

lawyers,

doctors

and police

officers as

customers