SIR – The method used today for teaching maths, particularly basic arithmetic, is the cause of later problems with this subject.
Learning to add in columns and learning times tables are the core elements, yet many are leaving school totally unable to do this, and it’s too late then.
I’m not pleased to say this, but I was better educated in the 1940s and 1950s.
Of course there was proper discipline then, not that we saw it as discipline, it was just the way to behave.
No messing about, and teachers just had to teach the subject, not be social workers – no mobile phones, no assaults on them, they were valued.
Liberal values have brought our education standards down to Third World status.
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