I've mentioned before that Japan has a very cash-driven society, which while being somewhat inconvenient at times, has the added effect of improving the overall level of arithmetic ability. Often shop staff will not even need to refer to the cash register in order to calculate how much change should be given to you, making the whole process extremely swift. It was a very common practice to purposefully overspend a certain amount to ensure you'd get the desired change, improving customer arithmetic too!
However, having come back to the UK, I've noticed that the level of mental arithmetic ability is severely lacking. At the train station for example, the ticket I usually bought is £18.60, for which I can assume people usually pay £20 and end up with a pile of change, but I decided to try and engineer a return of a £5 note. Upon paying £23.60, I had been met with perplexed gazes on no less than 3 separate occasions. Staring at the amount they had been given, they would repeat the price to me - as if I had misheard - to which I would reply "Well that's £5 change, isn't it?"
It's often mentioned how the level of English ability is steadily decreasing amongst our population, but if staff dealing with money all day cannot handle this level of simple mathematics, I fear the level of all basic and core subject may be slipping. What's more, it seems valuable school time is now going to be spent teaching children how to be respectful, polite, and deal with anger - something that absolutely should have been taught by parents in the first place.
3 comments:
Schools should spend less time teaching the mathematics which I consider should be more opitional, and be making sure that students are up to scratch on the basics, because for the majority, that's all that they will be using for the rest of their life.
I love going into a shop and watching some teenager struggling with counting change from the cash register, even when it displays the amount. I laugh... hard.
Schools should be allowed to concentrate on teaching the basics, reading, writing and arithmetic, rather then be forced to test the students all the time.
Kids today are leaving school not knowing the basics but rather leaving knowing how to take a test. This is in no way helping our population.
And I wish blogger would allow us to edit our posts - I had to delete the first one due to bad spelling - ironic I know.
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