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The Rhodesia Herald, February 21, 1970
PUPILS at Sharon School, Salisbury, will hardly be out of their classrooms on Wednesday when their places will be taken by their mums and dads.
More than 90 parents – accountants, lawyers, pharmacists, businessmen, and women – will take their seats, raise pads, and poise pens for their first lesson in New Maths.
“The point of getting the parents in is so they can follow what the children are doing,” explained the school’s headmaster, Mr Stan Cliff.
“The language is new and so is the approach. So they have to start re-thinking.”
Pupils at Sharon School, which caters mostly for the Jewish community, touched lightly on the New Maths technique last year. But this year, Mr Cliff decided to implement it fully.
“The results have been fantastic,” he said. “They have taken to it like ducks to water.”
Mr Cliff was first introduced to New Maths – a misnomer, he insisted, as the first signs of the set theory, the basis of modern maths, date back to the early 19th century and was first used in 1939 in Russia – in New Zealand where he spent six years working with a curriculum development unit on this method.
The Wednesday evening students will start work at 7.30pm for one to two hours.
The length of the course? “That depends on the parents,” said Mr Cliff, who will do the teaching.
“But I should say it will be a minimum of eight weeks.”
The response to Mr Cliff’s “back to the schoolroom” call, was remarkable. Within four days, replies were pouring in.
Mr Cliff thinks this is the first class for parents on New Maths in the city. “I’m quite excited about the whole thing,” he said.
LESSONS FOR TODAY
- Learning is a continuous process. One can never be too old to learn.
- The ability to learn is determined by one’s determination, drive or hunger to gain knowledge.
- It is important for parents to take a pro-active approach to their children’s school work because adopting such an approach will enable them to adequately assist their children.
- The introduction of a new concept always requires detailed explanation for them to make sense.
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