Mental Arithmetic

[RobNorth]

Do kids still have "Mental Arithmetic" lessons at school?

[waterboatman]

sue? Sure! duh!

[Old_Geezer]

Wow, it's far too long ago to remember what I could do on starting school. Impressed by other folk's memory.

[Peter Pedant]

// 'Ponce about'. You mean get it out and press 5 buttons?//

getting it out - yeah I like that - oh ! yeah sorry....
I am doing evg classes in book keeping and the clickety clack starts up pretty quickly after kick off ( 6 pm). My teacher asked what seven sevens were ( 49 it was 49 when you asked last week ...) [ as in she didnt know rather than she thought I had forgotten my seven times table ] and Chris who was having difficulty had to use one to tell me what 1+2+3 was

when calculators first came in the kids were specifically taught 'checks'. 6.278 times 7.986 should be near 48 and NOT 4.8 or 480
but from Chris even that has gone by the board

'all we had were slide rules and log books' is just met with blank looks. " yeah we seen dem in museums" is NOT heard because the class can't really be described as museum going

oh does anyone remember at school being given stapled erm lavatory paper ( Jotter ) for doing quick calculations ? - and not messing up the exercise book

[Peter Pedant]

and Chris is in the class
and NOT dear Chris Buen Chico ....

[naomi24]

//Do kids still have "Mental Arithmetic" lessons at school?//

Some do, and the rest should. An invaluable asset in life.

[roopower]

All the schools I worked in did mental arithmetic work, playing games to learn tables, etc. Foundation class learnt counting in 2s,5s,10s. As far as I know, there is a mental arithmetic paper in the year 6 SATs.

[RobNorth]

I regularly see articles in the press involving usually large numbers which are obviously incorrect, with decimal points in the wrong place or too many zeros - it doesn't seem to matter....