It's a MAD, MAD world and not in a good way!!

[Deleted User 2747]

Millions of children in England will begin a "tough" new national curriculum when they return to school this week.

Five-year-olds will learn fractions and computer coding............

[Holt Park Loyal]

That's today's world everything is controlled by computers! My daughters are 5 and 6, that's the first ive heard of them learning fractions (my youngest is going into year 1 and only knows basic adding up) and computer coding but i'm glad if they are learning about coding from a young age, they are going to need to know these things growing up the same way I needed to know basic communication skills! Fact of life these days im afraid!

[Deleted User 728]

Nothing wrong with learning fractions. I'm always stunned that so many adults don't know how to work out percentages - which is basically the same thing, just expressed in a different way.

It's like the morons who are "proud" not to have read a book since leaving school ...

[johnh]

I don't know, but I wouldn't mind betting they have been doing it for many years in primary schools in China.

[Deleted User 2747]

Nothing wrong with learning fractions.

I'm always stunned that so many adults don't know how to work out percentages - which is basically the same thing, just expressed in a different way.

It's like the morons who are "proud" not to have read a book since leaving school ...

Completely agree, but at 5 they are just learning how to count and do very, very basic arithmetic, they are still learning to write and to read, some are still unable to speak properly!

I have taught fractions to 6 and 7 year old children and even at that age they take a while to grab the concepts of even simple fractions. Believe me most struggle with fractions, it is not an easy concept for young children.

I have also taught 4 and 5 year old children halving and doubling - again, most struggle with this concept for quite some time before they click with it.

The government have no idea about child development - they are insane!

[Deleted User 2747]

I don't know, but I wouldn't mind betting they have been doing it for many years in primary schools in China.

You can't compare children in other countries to those in our country. The cultures are different, parenting is different, attitudes are different.

[Deleted User 2747]

In E-Sports, Video Gamers Draw Real Crowds and Big Money!



http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/techn ... amers.html

As someone who for the life of me, can not understand the attraction of computer games, this is just WAY OUT THERE CRAZY!!

[Deleted User 728]

As someone who for the life of me, can not understand the attraction of computer games, this is just WAY OUT THERE CRAZY!!

You know how big the movie industry is ?
Well, the p**n industry is bigger.
You know how big the p**n industry is ?
Well, the gaming industry is bigger than both put together.

I am precisely the right age to have played every single generation of video games, from the original "Pong" arcade game as a 9 or 10 year old in my local bowling alley (where I was supposed to be bowling) ...

... through next gen-classics like Space Invaders, Defende, Scramble and Phoenix ...

... the more advance vector graphics of Asteroids and Battlezone ...

... then the Jap classics like Donkey Kong ...

... and these are all 10p arcade machines.
Then along came Binatone, the Atari 2600, the NES, Sega Megadrive, SNES, N64, The Playstation, PS2, Xbox, Wii, PS3, Wii-U and final Xbox1 and PS4 ... that's not to mention online gaming, the rise (and rise) of the PC, MMORPGs, The Sims, Football Manager, hand-held machines like the GameGear, Lynx, and the seminal Gameboy, followed by the DS ... and now all of that and more on your phone handset ...

Gaming is a massive part of my life - always has been and always will be.

If you watch TV - soaps, serials, dramas, reality - you really have no right to put down gamers or decry the industry in any way, shape or form.
We're ALL watching a screen ... at least our thumbs are getting a work-out

[Selby White]

Rigger,
You bring back memories, remember going in the bar at Leeds station after matches to play the Pong game, they were one of the first places that had it installed, it was set in a table top.
Then it was space Invaders and to be honest don't think I've played any of the games since, just not into it.

Before that was a wizzard on the Pinball machines though during my college days.

[johnh]

I remember when the Tennis game was 'high tec'. In the 1970's I won an Atari in a competition. It contained Tennis, a Tank game with Tanks in a maze, plus a few others I can't remember. The only problem was that one of the controls worked slightly better than the other, so whoever had that one always won. My two sons soon got fed up with it. At work, we had a demonstration pack of several hundred punched cards of varying colours, each colour had a code punched in. If we had visitors, we would load the multi-coloured pack of cards into the machine, press the button and it would sort them by colour. Hours of fun.