My hubby teaches Pri 5 kids. Yesterday he had a revelation during Maths class, when the students were asked to draw a triangle with a 5cm side. Walking around the class, he noticed that one student's line was unusually short and pointed it out to him. Bewildered, the student whipped out his ruler, laid it beside the line and showed my hubby that it was exactly 5cm.

My goodness. He had measured the line starting from the 1cm mark instead of the 0. As my hubby patrolled the class he realised he had to point this out to more and more students, and finally made an announcement to the whole class to clarify.

The entire class was gasping in disbelief and horror, and needed further convincing. They had been using the ruler wrongly all their lives! As he recounted the incident with sound effects, I imagined their faces and found it amusing.

But on hindsight, what does that say about our education, that such basic skills could not even be taught correctly? How is the world going to survive depending on these kids?

Labels: Cynic In The House