[ExI] relevant skills movement, was: RE: emp again

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Sat Apr 28 18:28:02 UTC 2012


On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 6:49 PM, spike wrote:
<snip>
> I have taught my son arithmetic functions, and he knows how to do all of
> them.  But is it worth his valuable time to really master that, when he
> carries a calculator in the form of a cell phone?  It is already far more
> likely that he will carry a cell phone than a pencil and a piece of paper.
>
> I can argue it either way: mastery of hand calculation trains the mind in
> ways that will be useful for writing software, or mastery of hand
> calculation is as irrelevant (and time costly) as mastering how to extract
> square roots by hand, for we have better ways to do those tasks today, and
> furthermore you wouldn't trust your hand calcs anyway unless you could check
> it with your phone.
>
> So, if we recognize that mastery of arithmetic such as long division takes
> time that can be used on more relevant skills but trains the mind, I can go
> two routes with it: arithmetic either makes children smart or makes them
> stupid.
>
>

I'm no expert on the strange creatures called children, but I have an
opinion.....

Yes, teach arithmetic, but follow it up with mental arithmetic. Like
playing chess, it improves the logic and analyzing functions. It will
come in handy for estimating and planning lots of things, including
strategy games. Which you should also introduce.

He will encounter many cases where mental maths shows that the
intuitive answer is wrong.

It will impress the checkout girls as well, when he can add up his
shopping and have the correct money ready, or tell them when they give
the wrong change due to a key-in error   ;)


BillK




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