Who cares about Maths? How Pound Shops help make you stupid...

As we have seen in the previous post, according to the government it has never been a better to get into teaching maths. I completely agree, simply because I see maths as arguably one of the most useful subjects in life, even if a certain leading Education Research Fellow at the Policy Exchange doesn’t agree. He and supposedly 55% of the public think there should be a greater emphasis on vocational and practical subjects in the educational system.

However, are they correct? Does the traditional academic subjects still have their value? Consider this situation; when this highly intelligent Education Research Fellow catches a suspicious looking pound shop retail assistant short changing him, he should thank his school for forcing him to learn maths, otherwise he’d be oblivious to this blatant con. Whilst he should not be surprised by this gaff as the poor chap probably didn’t learn maths. Unfortunately, his comprehensive knowledge of Welding Studies or Textile Design hasn’t helped him here.

I would say who cares about losing some pennies or pounds here and there, your sofa probably hides more change than this dim witted cashier unwittingly seized. Yet shops should return the correct change, no matter if you are buying a penny sweet or a Penny Black. Moreover, if shopping in a pound shop, you are probably trying to budget. But this attempt at frugality is destroyed if you get the wrong change.

This Education Research Fellow might think that suffering the budget surroundings might actually save him a few pounds, a claim which Channel 4’s Dispatches seemed to have dispelled. Whether or not their claim that pound shops aren’t actually that cheap is true, what is more significant is how these shops are affecting your mathematically ability. Ok you may save a few pounds, but is every visit essentially making you more stupid?

As long as someone can count, most could guess their bill as everything is obviously £1. However, what happens when they leave the store and are faced with decimals? Those awful things, with an annoying full stop stuck in the middle of them. With the ubiquity of the loose-change generating 99p items found in most other shops on the high street, or these days in out of town shopping centres as the high streets have supposedly died, what happens to these pound shop aficionados when mental arithmetic is required? They didn’t study maths, so short of whipping out a calculator in the vegetable isle, they may be stumped and just put there chosen items on the counter, hoping the total price in within their budget.

So if this leading academic does venture into one of these bargain busting hotspots and hopes to save a few pounds, the lack of mathematical dexterously will have backfired. If the poor retail assistant was forced to learn maths, instead of Pastry Studies, he might have given the correct change. Better still, he may have managed to get a more challenging and enjoyable job.

This poor guy is obviously one of the 552,575 pupils who were thought to have taken at least one of the so-called Mickey Mouse subjects in 2011. What is concerning is that the number of pupils taking the typical academic subjects - maths, a science, English, languages, history and geography, has halved under Labour to barely one in six. So looking to the future, check your change if living on a budget, whilst more importantly, be grateful you learnt maths!