From our new government's education policy:

"National will require all primary and intermediate schools to spend an average of an hour a day on reading, an hour a day on writing, and an hour a day on maths."

This looks like it is designed to appeal to old white men, like me. A lot of us feel our bodies aging and kind of resent those pretty young people who can do all those things we can't any more. So the idea of them having to knuckle down and do some work, like we once had to, appeals to some of us. We have similar ideas involving avocado toast, but that is another topic. Of course few of us have any idea what goes on in schools today, neither do we have a clue about what works and what doesn't.

When I went to school we used to chant times tables. Well, it was a way of getting them in there. Then pocket calculators became so ubiquitous that the memorising was less important than knowing what multiplication meant. At that point the basics shifted. Sure, it is still handy to know 5 x 7 is 35, but mainly to do a quick estimate rather than a specific calculation.

And what other changes have there been, or will be soon, to the basics? The kids at school today will be using these skills for the next 50 years or more (maybe, but who knows what upheavals we will see over that time?). Anyway, it takes us out to the 2070s. Now look back to life in the 1970s. Phones were all land lines, watches were mostly analogue, computers were rare and mysterious. Most jobs today weren't invented, those that were are now very different. You know farmers today use spreadsheets, right?

Which is when I got thinking about hand writing. I assume the youngest children still spend lots of time learning to use a pencil or a pen to form letters and to write stuff down because, well, you need that, of course. It takes a lot of time but everyone knows it is necessary. We got taught to use a dip pen and then a fountain pen, such vital skills to spend precious time on! I assume they don't do all that now.

But I think we all know that by 2070 few people will ever need handwriting. Already most of us have a phone with a note taking app if we want to jot something down. Often we can dictate it. The last office I worked in (an IT shop) had laptops everywhere. I was the only one who felt the need of a pencil and paper as well, and I was much older than the others.

Someone is going to point out that after the apocalypse our phones won't work and we'll be back to pencils and paper. Sure. Then you would be keen to add how to actually make pencils and paper to the syllabus, wouldn't you? Also various survival skills such as how to gut a pig and how to lay out a body. I am more optimistic than that.

So I hope, when we talk about what basics we need to educate the children with we're focusing on the things that aren't likely to go out of date: sciences and humanities (including maths). More specifically how to access them: reading skills, search skills, communication skills. And when I say maths I don't mean arithmetic, I mean real maths. Those things will be useful whether there is an apocalypse or not.

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