Yesterday I took part in an interesting CfE exercise at MGS where class each class teacher teamed up with another from a different department to investigate common ground and curricular connections. As an instructor, I was not really programmed into this but was very pleased to be included, having put out some gate-crashing feelers. The power of Maths decreed that many would be paired up with teachers of the subject and I was pleased to see that one member of the Music Department was Maths-bound.

As all expected, there were many overlaps. However, there were also a few false friends – words, the interpretation of which in either subject, is so different that we ought now to be on the lookout for understandable confusion. Examples?

Scale: referring in Maths to order of magnitude but in Music to the various spellings of stepwise movement in a melodic line

Time: time is relative in Music and absolute in Maths

Happily, the connections outweigh the differences by miles – is that a mixed metaphor? I’ll ask the English Department when we pair up with them 🙂