Decimal Currency In Schools
Sir,—Your second leader on Saturday, though carefully following the party line, gives a regrettably superficial account of the effects of decimal currency on education. The figures quoted only show that decimals are inappropriate for calculations using our .present currency, as is indeed also true for many other practical situations. In fact, the solitary advantage of decimals is for finger-counting, the most primitive of all reckoning skills, dependence on which retart's the mature development of arithmetical understanding in the child. It is this handicap that decimal currency dooms our children to suffer. Of the full magnitude of its consequences, the public can now only be dimly aware, but coming at a time when the artificial place of decimals in arithmetic is only just being appreciated, the circumstances are hardly less than tragic.—Yours etc., B. A. M. MOON. October 31, 1965.
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Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30897, 2 November 1965, Page 18
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143Decimal Currency In Schools Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30897, 2 November 1965, Page 18
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