You really want to freak someone out: When buying something pay cash. Let's say the amount you owe is $9.25. Hand them a ten dollar bill, and after they have punched in the amount tendered, pull out a quarter and hand it to them. They have no idea how to adjust the change back. At all. They are totally flummoxed.
Well, a quarter can also be three months, or about 92 days give or take.
Those of us who learned to tell time on analog clocks can use phrases such as "a quarter to three" or "five past six" or "twenty five or six to four" as the Chicago song has it. People who grew up with digital clocks can have trouble with that because the same times should be "three forty five" or "six oh five" or "three thirty four or five."
Of course I can really mess with people because I prefer the 24 hour clock and am likely to say "fifteen twenty" or something even more nonsensical, because my many years doing marine navigation make me think in terms of Greenwich or Zulu time or UTC.
I do feel badly for this young man. His thinking ability is present--as you noted, there are several basic principles and experiences he would have to have in order to reason through this.
Taxpayers fund government-operated schools based on enrollment. This gives to system administrators a strong direct financial incentive to maximize residence time in the system (i.e., to waste students' time).
It does not take 12 years at $16,958 per student-year (2020-2021 US K-12 average) to teach a normal child to read and compute. Most vocational training occurs more effectively on the job than in a classroom.
Children, parents, real classroom teachers with valuable skills to impart, and taxpayers would benefit from a move toward a voucher-subsidized competitive market in education services. Only the out-of-classroom parasites who infest large school districts (and Marxist Social Studies teachers) would lose.
You really want to freak someone out: When buying something pay cash. Let's say the amount you owe is $9.25. Hand them a ten dollar bill, and after they have punched in the amount tendered, pull out a quarter and hand it to them. They have no idea how to adjust the change back. At all. They are totally flummoxed.
Well, a quarter can also be three months, or about 92 days give or take.
Those of us who learned to tell time on analog clocks can use phrases such as "a quarter to three" or "five past six" or "twenty five or six to four" as the Chicago song has it. People who grew up with digital clocks can have trouble with that because the same times should be "three forty five" or "six oh five" or "three thirty four or five."
Of course I can really mess with people because I prefer the 24 hour clock and am likely to say "fifteen twenty" or something even more nonsensical, because my many years doing marine navigation make me think in terms of Greenwich or Zulu time or UTC.
::: The USAF has entered the chat :::
I do feel badly for this young man. His thinking ability is present--as you noted, there are several basic principles and experiences he would have to have in order to reason through this.
Taxpayers fund government-operated schools based on enrollment. This gives to system administrators a strong direct financial incentive to maximize residence time in the system (i.e., to waste students' time).
It does not take 12 years at $16,958 per student-year (2020-2021 US K-12 average) to teach a normal child to read and compute. Most vocational training occurs more effectively on the job than in a classroom.
Children, parents, real classroom teachers with valuable skills to impart, and taxpayers would benefit from a move toward a voucher-subsidized competitive market in education services. Only the out-of-classroom parasites who infest large school districts (and Marxist Social Studies teachers) would lose.