On De-Bunking Arithmetic

Extract

They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand.
“If this were only cleared away,”
They said, “it would be grand.”

It would be, and if those young airmen of whom we heard in the February Gazette had not spent so much lost endeavour in weaving ropes of this sand, perhaps they would not now be in such need of the help which we are so eager to give them. For although the seven-times-seven mops of our teaching committees have been sweeping for far more than half a year, there is no doubt that school Arithmetic is still cumbered with a lot of stuff that is of no use outside the class-room. In spite of the fact that teachers mostly teach so well, and pupils learn so well, we must confess that children going out into the world often cannot do the calculations that they need, that Training College lecturers find that many students have to learn Arithmetic all over again (though we camouflage it as “Method”), and that intelligent well-educated folk seem to delight in telling anyone whom they suspect of mathematical leanings that “they never could do Arithmetic”. Surely it is the Arithmetic that is wrong, not the teachers or taught.