Arithmetic?

[R1Geezer]

I am alarmed at the amount of mind numbingly simple arithmetic questions being asked on here, not because of the people asking them but because clearly the education system is not actually educating kids any more. I mean they all know how many benefits they can claim and how to get each other up the duff do they can get a council flat and more benefits but 2+2? forget it! Perhaps I'm wrong the system is actually equiping the kids to be able to stripe the system effectively! So what happenned to the 3 Rs?

[jake-the-peg]

I think you'll find "Back in your days" people were just as dumb only they did CSEs and not O levels

Now there's just one qualification which is why it's easy to pick questions out of the lower level paper, compare them to an O level paper and say "What a lot of dumbing down"

Todays GCSEs still cover solving quadratics via formula and factorisation, algebra and simultaneous equations.

How are you all on the cosine formula?

You remember c�=a�+b�-2abcosθ

[craft1948]

Foreign language to me jake. However what surprises me is the lack of BASIC knowledge nowadays. No ordinary everyday writing skills and the inability to do even simple sums. These were subjects drilled into me at primary school.

[sophie_1003]

I have very little confidence in maths although I got a B on the higher paper at GCSE and I think this is the main problem, people see numbers and they panic. I'm doing a teaching degree at the moment and we were told about how the teaching of maths has changed, right up until 1999 (and I do remember this sytem as it was how I was 'taught' up until year 6) children were given booklets to work through, there was very little emphasis on mental arithmetic and teaching of methods to solve maths problems was kept at a minimum. When this is taken into account it is, I think, very understandable why children who went to school at this time are lacking in the basic skills of maths. Luckily the government decided that teaching in this way was no good anymore and mental arithmetic and learning general rules for all maths problems is now the current thoughts of how children should be taught.