Dilwyn Jones wrote:
Tony Tebby wrote:
You son would do fine here (in France). My son has just taken his French essay paper for the baccalauriat. This year the French paper has "Calculators not allowed for this paper" in big letters on the front - apparently French schoolchildren (sorry - young adult students) are all at sea without a calculator.
This I can well believe, though I fail to understand why your son might need a calculator in a FRENCH ESSAY paper???
Yet the strange thing is at 8 years old my son enjoys maths and can usually work out simple arithmetic much faster in his head than finding and fiddling with a calculator. Probably started as he meant to go along in future years by trying to flush away that calculator!
Years ago when I was doing my O-Levels, they introduced a calculator exam in maths that I took. It stated on the front of that paper that "approved calculators were allowed, but NOT slide rules". All we could ask was "what advantage does a slide rule have over a calculator other than you can draw a straight line with it?"
