During a lovely visit to the Museum of Branding, Packaging and Advertising (if you’re ever near Notting Hill, it’s a nice place to spend the afternoon), I overheard something that made me fear for humanity.
A coachload of teenagers had just turned up, mercifully as I was making my way around the gift shop at the end of the exhibition. The Crystal Maze-style dim lighting, glass panels and twisting corridors aren’t conducive to moving in even single file, which is why I went home with a nice bruise on my head from leaning in too close to the cabinet. I wasn’t about to get stuck in there with a job lot of bored kids, especially as they were discovering the lack of phone signal and starting to get a bit antsy.
There was a very small tea room, and some of the kids were debating whether to get drinks before going in. Three of them decided they wanted biscuits. That’s fine. The packs of biscuits were 85p each. It took them a good five minutes to try and work out what 85×3 is. “Well, it’s not going to be any more than £3, is it?” Oh, aren’t you clever.
Maths is one of those subjects that kids suspect they won’t get a lot of use out of outside of the classroom. After all, shop transactions are all calculated at the till, and in any case putting it on a credit or debit card means you don’t have to worry about the change anyway. So really, whether you end up on one side of the counter at Burger King or the other after you leave school it shouldn’t matter.
I’m not expecting your average 13-year-old to be able to recite the first 50 digits of pi, and to be honest if they can do that they’re not an average child. I do expect someone with an age in double figures to be able to multiply by three. I know I’ve already made my thoughts on children pretty clear, but I would be embarrassed to have offspring that couldn’t count further than the iPhone 5.
George Osborne apparently makes it a rule not to answer maths questions, as we saw recently when he refused to say what 7×8 is. Let’s hope teens are still rebellious enough to avoid using politicians as role models. And that they can at least put two and two together when it comes to everything else.
