School maths and street maths

A recent study led by Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee exposes a stark disconnect in India’s mathematics education between “street maths” and “school maths”. The study reveals that when child vendors can mentally calculate complex market transactions at ease, they cannot solve simpler abstract mathematical equations taught in schools. On the other hand, their school-going counterparts who excel in academic maths very often fail at basic real-world calculations.

There are so many instances I have come across to support the observation of the study. More than five decades ago when we were little children in vernacular schools, the dropout rate was very high due to extreme poverty. A large number of children would be destined to work as child labour. Another reason behind such a high dropout rate was of course corporal and inhuman punishment perpetrated by the then teachers who believed in the adage “spare the rod and spoil the child”.

One of my dropout friends worked as an assistant in an obscure grocery store owned by his father. He left school mainly because of the corporal punishment which he had to endure almost every day. As a student, he could hardly do simple additions and subtractions. He failed to remember the number tables above five. He played truant frequently. Very often, the “catching squad” comprising a group of students meant to fetch absentees to the classrooms forcibly would be deployed to place him before the class.

I used to go to that grocery where my dropout friend worked to buy goods. For the first few months, he worked as an aide whose duty was to fetch grocery goods to his father. Besides, he brought down the containers from the high shelves with the help of a small ladder and put them properly to their niche. But after not more than a year of apprenticeship, he was found running the shop even in the absence of his father. He could calculate the prices of a variety of goods with ease applying the methods of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. As our locality was predominantly inhabited by poverty-stricken people, they could not afford to buy a rounding amount of goods. But he could calculate and settle accounts of the prices of long lists of goods proficiently. What surprised me most was that a boy who failed to memorise the number tables and work out simple additions could easily keep in his mind the rates of more than a hundred grocery items and add long lists of the prices of goods perfectly and swiftly.

Now he owns the largest retail grocery counter in the heart of the town market. Half a dozen persons are always ready to serve the customers with alacrity. Customers have to slide the thick, toughened glass door to enter the air-conditioned spacious room. Bright lights and neon glow signs give the store an illusive look in the evening. Now his store is accessible only to the well-off and so-called standard customers of the town.

After going through the research study of the Nobel laureate couples, I felt inquisitive to know the reason for my friend’s sudden proficiency in simple mathematical calculations. He confessed frankly that he was so reluctant in the classroom study and the teachers seemed so formidable to him that the school was nothing but a compulsory purgatory to him.

It is heartening to note that modern schools have started recognising the value of relating mathematical concepts to real-world situations, or “street maths”. This approach enables students to understand practical applications of what they learn in “school maths”. There is a growing popularity of connecting abstract mathematical ideas taught in schools to everyday contexts such as shopping, cooking, baking, gardening, and sewing.

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