Yes – I get the impression fractions are taught in primary school and then scarcely touched again. When Imperial measurements were in use they got constant revision, particularly for boys doing metalwork and so on; with metric measurements they do not.

(Correction: my son, having seen this, has slightly indignantly said that he has done fractions in secondary school, although they are not done as a topic in themselves, but as part of probability or some other topic. OK, exaggeration above – but he has to admit that he needed practice at home to reinforce the sketchy treatment in school.)

Oddly, you might have found that your innumerate fellow students would have had little trouble with cancelling “x” top and bottom of an algebraic fraction. The problem really is just *numbers*. A lot of quite good students seem not to connect algebraic fractions with the 1/2 + 1/3 they did in primary school. Of course that makes them weak in algebraic fractions, but they can do them most of the time. Strange.

10/10 = 1

Yes, for those of you who think you have had a nasty turn, that is ten divided by ten equals one. Admittedly there were a few numbers above and below the line. It was something like:

148 x 0.65 x 10/ 45600 x 10

But when the two tens were struck out the individual thought that it was some sort of fiddle. He was joined by three or four others similarly mystified. This was not a joke or a spoof, I knew them and they were hopelessly innumerate.

Six months later all of them received their second science degree at a British university.

P.S I did my 11+ in 1957. That alone would probably have given me a pass in the maths exam.

Back in the day, a teacher didn’t need, perhaps, quite so much force of personality to maintain order. The ingrained culture of outward respect and deference for all teachers, rigidly enforced, could cover for quite a few personal shortcomings.

The ‘streak of eccentricity’ remark brought it all flooding back.

We had one master who was internationally-renowned in the art of Scottish country dancing. To watch this guy, in his 40s, prancing around in full Highland dress, was a sore trial to the legions of teenage boys forced to both watch and participate (it was a PE requirement, solely due to his personal involvement), but the Code meant that we had to keep our thoughts to ourselves, on pain of durance vile.

One headmaster was famous for his sartorial peculiarities, on a famous occasion pulling up a boy for wearing trousers wide enough to make ‘a skirt for a good-sized wench.’ You do not say this sort of thing to 13-year-old boys – not if you want to earn their respect, you don’t.

One master taught art & architecture classes in spite of the fact that he was blind as a bat – he’d taught the same class for so long that he had it all in his mind’s eye.

Ah, the dear, dead days.

llater,

llamas

Knowing your subject is fine, as is being able to impart information clearly and concisely in perfect conditions, but if you can’t do it for 30 plus ( I was taught in classes of 30+) fidgety unruly eleven year olds (and this was 1963, we were angels compared to what kids are like now) then you are no teacher. Suited to higher education perhaps, where people actually want to learn, but not to the conscripts of our Compulsory Education system.

I was thinking of my first Maths teacher in Grammar school when I wrote. He was a Cambridge graduate, so knew his stuff and in dead silence was a good communicator, but nasty little animals that all kids are, we instinctively knew how to wind him up, and would make silly little jokes that would push him into apoplectic rage. We spent half of all our maths lessons that first year, learning little and standing to attention by our desks, while he went purple in the face and threatened to chuck us all out the window.

It helps if a teacher has a streak of eccentricity too. We had a Geography teacher who was nicknamed Eggy, bald as a coot, looked 108, with the weirdest Welsh accent you ever heard. He wasn’t 108 of course, probably early 50′s. He had been a Commando during WW2 and got blown to hell, had more steel plates in him than a steam engine, but his delivery of the subject was just spellbinding, you never knew what he was going to come up with next. So ladies and gents I give you one of his most famous “Eggyism’s, which explains in one pithy memorable line, all you will ever need to know about the climate and topography of the Subcontinent…

“Remember bwoys, the Himilayas make India warmer than it really is”

Natalie, I have to take RAB’s POV here: good teaching is not just about the ability to explain, it is also (if not mostly) about the ability to incite interest. When that happens, there remains little need to impose discipline. I am not saying none, but little.

A went into teaching after an academic research career in his subject. He was undeniably brilliant in that subject, but totally unable to explain it to a class of 15 year olds seeing it for the first time

B went into teaching despite what seems to have been an indifferent degree (at best). His grasp of his subject was far less than that of A, but by the end of each lesson we each knew as much about it as B himself. That proved enough to pass the O level.