While at Wal-Mart recently, I witnessed a quiet but rather surprising incident at the checkout.

The total for my purchases at the ubiquitous chain came to $50.43. I gave the beautiful young lady at the checkout, who I estimated to be between the ages of 18-21, a $50 bill, one quarter, one dime, one nickel, and three pennies.

She placed the $50 down on the counter and concentrated on the change now in the palm of her hand. She pushed it around with the finger of her other hand, looking puzzled, while I, at first, waited calmly.

She honestly tried to make sense of it, but her face gave her away. And soon she gave up all together and put the change on the counter as well. She then brought out her calculator and proceeded to add up the quarter, dime, nickel, and pennies!

Maybe I caught her on an off day, but is it really that hard to mentally calculate $50 + .25 + .10 + .05 + .03?

I probably would have embarrassed her if I had asked if she needed help counting the change, and I’m sure I still have dent marks on the inside of my lips from biting them in an effort to keep my mouth shut.

Perhaps this young lady was absent in fourth grade the day they learned to count money. Or perhaps she has only lived in a world of credit and debit cards, missing all the fun of cold hard cash. But I’m really afraid that she was never taught how to add properly; mental computation being a thing of the past now.

This brought to mind a document held by the Smoky Valley Genealogy Society of Salina, Kansas. It is the test administered to eighth-graders at the end of the school term in 1895. and it’s worth checking out and taking it yourself. Most college students – heck, professors – probably couldn’t make it to first base on this one.

The test consisted of Reading and Penmanship; oral for reading, and penmanship to be graded from manuscripts. Also, Grammar, Arithmetic, U.S. History, Orthography, Geography, and Health – all timed tests. Here are the questions from the Arithmetic test, timed to be taken in 1 and 1/4 hour:

1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50 cts. per bu, deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?
4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $.20 per inch?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.

Contrast that with the state of Texas’ own tests, the easiest standardized tests in the country, known as the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. On the website you can scroll down, look at the left-hand side of the page, and download the eighth-grade tests. 

All the problems for Math are multiple choice, and of course, oh so relevant to the youngsters’ world, with trendy names, and cool activities used in the examples. But notice at the beginning that a couple of charts are included, giving the students access to a math table, and also to all the formulas they would need to solve problems.

There was no indication of any time limits, but a cover letter provided the information that out of the 50 problems, only 30 correct answers were needed, which, it said, was supposedly around 70 percent.

That got me scratching my head. Stated in the cover letter was also the news that the exact number for passing the test is determined after all the tests have been graded – so it’s a curve.

If the test is any example of what is being taught, and I’m sure it is because there is so much emphasis on teaching to the test these days because of the No Child Left Behind mandates, then it’s not surprising the girl at Wal-Mart couldn’t count the change. There was pattern recognition and spatial reasoning, charting and chart reading, some basic algebra and geometry, but little or no simple computation.

It’s no wonder then politicians can so easily pull the wool over the public’s eyes. In the case of the $700 billion bailout, which will actually cost more than that, up into the trillions, many are simply ignorant of the truly staggering price we are now to pay.

The least anyone can do for their child is to make sure they understand the value of money, and that they can count it, forward and backward.

This is for their own financial security, in a world that permits larceny on a grand scale.

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