BBC Radio 4, Analysis - Wasted Youth

They will back H Neary. It's the beeb.

You lose! Try Again!

That sounds like me at 14min 57 seconds.

ICBA to listen again. Was that the (sensible) business owner saying that all he needs is someone with the right attitude and he can can teach them everything else they need to know? Anyway, lots of sense talked. Will the government listen? Oink flap.

There was a bit in the link about some kids learning nothing from the ages of 14 to 16 years old (25min37sec) and how they hated the prison like enviroment of school.

They would never survive an apprenticeship at some firms.

They've got experience of prison already?

If they've got to age 14-16 and have always done what they like, something very wrong with their earlier schooling.

Its not their schooling its their parents.

'Schooling' doesn't necessarily mean just formal education at school. And I used it in the broader meaning.

And didn't your schooling include use of the apostrophe?

n'o.

Some of them would be better off leaving school at 14 and doing an apprenticeship. The college part of the apprenticeship could cover the GCSE exams they need for the job (maths in my case) and forget the ones they do not need.

My brother taught maths at a fairly rough comprehensive in Aberdeen. Perhaps one of the most difficult subjects to teach to those with no interest in learning.

He also did night school teaching to supplement his income.

He often got the same pupils having to learn the same basic maths in their own time that they could have done 'for free' at school. And took great delight in pointing this out...

Thanks to text speak apostrophes will disappear altogether soon

I remember my maths teacher asking a pupil who said maths was a waste of time "How are you going to fill in your benefit forms when you leave school if you don't know some maths?". And that actually worked. The lad tried in maths from then on. If fact he went on to get a job and I pass him most mornings on my way to work (he is a milkman).

He has to keep a tally of the housewives.

I've no idea how maths is taught these days, but ISTM that for boys especially the best way would be in terms of problem solving. Simultaneous equations are an eye glazer, but "if the bullet leaves the gun at x mph and the plane is flying at y mph .... at what point do you press the trigger" might instill a little interest.

I was trying to help the gf's 8 year old lad the other day with his maths homework.

It maths but not maths as I knew it.

I like to think my brain is no less receptive of mathematical concepts than others but believe I suffered from a single maths teacher operating on the above idea.

Nice bloke in his slightly tired demob suit and a very enthusiastic model engineer. In my first year he demonstrated the strength of electromagnetism with two boys failing to pull apart a small coil assembly he had turned up on his lathe. He used the interest created to demonstrate the usefulness of being able to use maths to equalise the areas of the centre pole and outer.

However, he obviously found teaching basics boring and we spent the next

Different approach for different blokes I guess.

regards

It is called chunking. And it bollocks IMHO.

Maybe Tim Watts might like to comment as he has two kids that are probably taught at school how to "chunk" and Tim is about the same age to me so we were probably taught our maths in a similar way to each other.