Originally Posted by ncredbird
Several years ago DH and I had a small yogurt shop. Employees were HS kids. I taught them to make change in the manner you describe and one of them asked me one time. Why bother? The cash register does it for you. I asked her how she was going to do her job if the register stopped working or the power went out. She replied that she would close the door and go home. Needless to say we hired a more enlightened employee. Ann in TN
My ten year old GD made that comment not to long ago when she asked me to use a calculator to add her math and I told her no. I asked her if the teacher allows them to use it in class to which she said no. So I asked her why should it be different with doing her homework to which she responded "all my friends use them and it's quicker" to which I replied "and I'll bet when it comes time for them to take a math test they will fail because they did not know how to add or subtract, or even mulitple using there brain."
I proceeded to teach her how to do it in her head without a calculator.
I remember growing up getting answers for a math problem by the time the teacher put it on the board. I was in about 3rd, 4th grade when the Catholic Nun who was teaching us how to add large groups of numbers and my always coming up with the answer in my head and having it by time she put her last number on board. It use to baffle her to no end.
Back when I went to school we learned reading, writing and arithmetic which comprised only adding, subtracting, mulitplication, and division.
Anyway she was good at putting these huge rows of numbers on the board sometimes as much as ten rows across and ten down. By the time she put the last number down I had written the answer on a piece of paper. She would ask after a few minutes who had the answer and of course I always raised my hand and some days she wished someone else did.
She did not do like teachers today do such as putting number across row by row. She would start to the right bottom of the board and put a number and work her way up than go back to botton and start over again. So as she was doing that I was counting those numbers going up and mark it down and carry mentally in my mind when she started the second row and went up. Hence by time she put the last number down I had the answer.
She pretty much did the same with subtraction that she put on board up to 5 numbers across. She would put the first number down and put the top one than move to the left and repeat so by time she put last two numbers down I had the answer.
Today teachers if they even put numbers down on board it's straight across row by row.
It's amazing to me how many work in retail as cashiers and who can't count change out unless a machine tells them to. But what do we expect when you have stores today such as fast food and even grocery stores that show pictures on keys for cashiers to punch for products and they never have to put in an amount.