Look after the pennies

It is fifty years since I left school and things have changed more than a little during that half century. No, slates had been made obsolete even before I started school, which was more than sixty years ago, but there have nevertheless been considerable changes in both what is taught and how it is taught. In my day, students who sat their A level exams were given their results as either a pass or a fail, with the percentage mark also being notified. Nowadays the results are given as grades, the top being A*. What has been noticeable over the past goodness how many years is that the percentage of students being awarded either A* or A has increased every year. The question being asked is have students have become cleverer or have the exams have become easier? We hear (or read) this question every August when the results are announced, but the matter has been aired again this month when it emerged that questions were set in one exam that touched on matters not covered by the national syllabus.

I don't propose to enter into that discussion here but I will state that in my opinion the exams have become easier. As far as the science exams are concerned - especially maths - they must have done. The whole subject of maths is easier now than it was before our currency was converted to decimal and since we have surreptitiously converted our weights and measures to a decimal system. Whereas under the old system of currency people were quite accustomed to doing mental arithmetic to convert a given number of pennies to shillings and a given number of shillings to pounds, no such mental exercise is needed now. But when there were twelve pence in a shilling and twenty shillings in a pound, it was second nature to know, for example, that thirty shillings represented one and a half pounds. Likewise, eighteen pence was one shilling and sixpence. If a shopkeeper told you that the price of something was fifty-five shillings, it was second nature to hand over three one-pound notes and expect two halfcrowns in change.

Even when my children were at primary school, they had to learn their multiplication tables up to twelve. They may still have to: I have no contact these days with schoolchildren of that age (or their parents) so have no way of knowing. Yes, it was tedious, but my elder son commented when in his teens that he was glad he had been made to learn them as it made life much easier to know that twelve sixes are 72 without having to work it out. If we had retained our imperial measures and currency, schoolchildren would still be learning their tables and finding later how useful they are.

It really made much more sense to use the imperial measurements of inches, feet, yards and miles. These were based, after all, on measurements taken from the human body, whereas the metric measurements are based on the metre which is itself based on the circumference of the earth (I think). That sounds eminently sensible - until one discovers that the measurement on which the metre is based is incorrect, thereby throwing out the whole system. Anyway, the base units of 12 and 20 in our old currency, 12, 3, 220 and 8 in distance and 16, 28, 4 and 20 in measurements might look somewhat haphazard, but they are capable of much better division than the base unit of 10.

I wouldn't want to bring back hanging, but I would be quite happy to see shillings and pence reintroduced. Yes, I know - I'm on old fogey, a proper dinosaur. But I'm a likeable chap as well.