[Catalyst4NaN]

That's a pretty horrible attitude to take to learning.

It's like asking why ever read a book, with a level of english past the level of a memo asking if you have completed a task. This article also seems to suggest that people don't understand how to preform basic mental arithmetic.

In the states there also seems to be this insane way of thinking that you should learn an algorithm to do things in a particular way, if you can do it one way you should understand it and all the other methods should just fall into place.

This is a pretty good explanation of the problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZED4gITL28

[ollysb]

There's an infinite number of things you could be learning, wouldn't it be better to concentrate your efforts on the things that are valuable to you individually? I'm not of the belief that you need to learn things at specific ages and I also believe that you learn much faster when you have an application in mind for a particular skill. That in mind I think students should be encouraged to explore the things that are of interest to them. (hey I took double maths for A-level and enjoyed every minute of it)

(hey I took double maths for A-level and enjoyed every minute of it)

[Catalyst4NaN]

yes I completely agree about specialization. but A) this is about people learning addition and B) some people are totally clueless about what is useful to them. there really is a lot of good that comes out of studying general stuff that stands to the a lot of people