Maths Test

The old Arab chest keeps revealing its treasures. Mixed up in a pile of letters which date to the middle 1960s was this scrap of paper, a maths test which, at a guess, I took when I was about five while at Mombasa European Primary School.

I seem to have started the test well on the simple addition and subtraction of single digits but things started to go wrong with the first answer which involved tens as well as units, where I transposed the digits, making 14 into 41.

Multiplication obviously floored me. I love the 2 x 6 = 6, but it indicates that I had no concept of what multiplication was.

The teacher's comment is so revealing. "He can do + & - of tens and units, but was so worried today he didn't have time to do them." So I worried then, have continued to worry ever since, and have passed this talent on to some of my children.