by startingover 13 Replies latest jw friends
Do you all think this is a reflection of under-50s in general, or of people who are employed in retail as sales clerks?
Hey, I"m nowhere near 50 yet!!! I think its a general trend because they're not teaching the kids in school anymore how to do math in their heads, it's not just a sales clerk. Honest to god, you give any teenager $20.02 when the bill is say $19.77 and unless they've got a calculator, they can't figure out that they need to give you a quarter back..........
Do you all think this is a reflection of under-50s in general, or of people who are employed in retail as sales clerks?
Well............ I am 57 and startingover is in his 50's or 50 can't remember ( this is another thing that comes w/age - leaky brain cells )!!!!!!!!
I worked in retail when I was 15 up until 17. We had to know how to count back change. We had to THINK. I'm sure it's because of the allowed use of calculators in school.
For us in our 50's the calculator wasn't born yet. I remember our first calculator - Texas Instruments - it was expensive, but my hubby bought it for me for balancing the check book. Thus less errors and faster.
To this day I mentally count back my change before the girl/guy hands it to me.
Juni
I think opportunity to use Maths is an important factor.
I was terrible at mental arithmetic until I worked in a bar. I'm nowhere good as I was as that was 7 years ago.
I can multiply and divide, subtract and add, and use and understand all the obvious extensions of that like percentages.
Big numbers I use a calculator. Repetative operations, I use a calculator; anything complex goes in Excel.
If I didn't have a computer or calculator, I'd be far better at more complex problems. And waste oodles of time doing repetative ones.
If I ever had a reason to differential calculus or quadratic equations, I'd have to re-learn it or use Mathmatica.
Younger people may have never gone through the phase where they became habituated to doing simple maths as they now are surrounded by machines that do it for them. Complex manual maths is now only done by mathematicians and some scientists, and even those people often use machines because it's quicker or simpler, or just easier.
If 'we' with maths educations in or before the seventies had never had to use what we learnt in our lessons, we'd be pretty much the same.
Im a maths teacher, and it make me really sad how wilfully dumb lots of kid are.
Im teaching a TOP SET trigonometry. Now I know its a hard topic, but I went through it really S L O W L Y, I wrote notes on the board and kept on checking that people were copying them down. Before I rubbed the notes off I said "is everyone satisfied that that have this copied into their book?" I waited a minute, then rubbed off the notes.
I did two worked examples to be copied down then I set two questions which were exactly like the worked examples except the numbers had changed.
One kid immediately puts his hand up and says "I dont get it". So I go over and talk him through my abbreviated 4 step guide which is still written on the board (1 - label triangle, 2 - pick the right formula, 3 - drop numbers into formula, 4 - plug numbers into calculator). I say which formula has an 'O' and an 'A' in it. Then I see he hasnt copied ANYTHING down. HOW CAN YOU PICK THE RIGHT FORMULA IF YOU HAVENT COPIED THEM DOWN??? I bawl.
I say "im not mad if you cant do this. I know its hard. But I AM MAD if you cant even copy down what I have written on the board and REPEATEDLY checked that everyone knows to copy it down"
How can you help these kids???? this was a TOP SET, not a bottom set that cant write (yes I have 12 and 13 year olds that can barely read and write, so its pretty hard to teach them maths because you have to read them every question).
