thrived on blind faith in gods and families of gods. But even when blind faith is directed towards distinctly other-worldy objects, it has a tendency to imply that a particular practical way of life is best. And this, we know, finally led to practical contradictions that contributed to the withering away of once-great civilisations. Today, faith in gods is rarely as blind as it used to be, because modernity inserts doubts into the minds of even the most devout believers. But blind faith seems to have jumped from theistic objects to the sciences, and in particular mathematics, a subject that puts many people on the defensive and therefore in no position to challenge its single-minded devotees. That this is a problem for mathematical education hardly needs to be said. But basic mathematical teaching has been stuck in a rut since the practical maths advocated by W.H. Cockcroft in his 1982 report, Mathematics Counts , ran out of steam in schools. It did not engage the divide between maths and reality well enough, or sufficiently interestingly, to carry conviction. The resulting compromise between practical maths and Platonic maths-for-maths'-sake is unconvincing for both teachers and pupils alike. A new paradigm is urgently needed, at all levels - primary, secondary and tertiary - if only to train the financiers of the 2030s. We have seen blind faith in mathematics in action recently. In addition to the contribution of mathematical models to the great credit crunch of 2008, take physicist Stephen Hawking's claim that