Stressed over sums

Or, in American, "angst over addition":

Some 13.5m adults in the UK become stressed out when asked to carry out basic sums, research suggests.

And 10m adults lack confidence in using literacy skills, analysis of questionnaires completed by 1,001 adults for Learndirect suggests.

The most common stress-raisers were working out cooking times, writing notes for the boss and tough spellings.

So maybe it isn't just kids who are having trouble with basic math -- or looking at it another way, if you don't get it down young, you might never get it down at all. Not to take the survey too seriously, however, as it appears to have been commissioned by a company specializing in providing remedial education. At the end of the BBC writeup, there is a box with a list of "Stressful Situations", which includes "Using grammar or apostrophes correctly". At least the survey participants were worried about it. . . .

Posted by David on March 8, 2008 5:06 PM