Kids selling vegetables are proficient in arithmetic but struggle with school math: Study

New Delhi: Indian kids working in markets are proficient in arithmetic skills and mental maths while selling vegetables but are unable to solve simple problems in an abstract form as taught in schools, Nobel laureate economists Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and colleagues said in a new study on Wednesday.

On the other hand, school children with no market-selling experience are either unable to solve the market-related arithmetic problems or take too much time even with pen and paper, the researchers reported, flagging a “failure of the pedagogical practices” in the way mathematics is taught in primary schools.

Published in Nature, the study involving over 1,400 Indian children goes contrary to a popular assumption in learning psychology that arithmetic skills can transfer naturally between practical (market) and academic (school) settings.

The researchers spoke to hundreds of kids in the markets of Kolkata and Delhi and purchased the items they were selling in unusual quantities, compelling the kids to solve complex arithmetic problems within minutes.

For example, the enumerators would ask how much 800 g of potatoes that the child sells at Rs 20 per kilogram costs and then how much 1.4 kg of onions that the child sells at Rs 15 per kilogram costs.

They would then ask for the total cost (Rs 37 in this case), before handing the child a Rs 200 note and collecting the change. The interviewer asked for unusual quantities that normal shoppers don’t buy.

Each of these steps was designed to measure the children’s applied arithmetic skills. They also gave similar tasks to children in government schools for a comparison.

Over 95 per cent of children working in the markets of Delhi and Kolkata effectively used arithmetic calculations and mental maths to make correct price calculations and hand over the change to the shopper.

“By contrast, children with no market-selling experience, enrolled in nearby schools, showed the opposite pattern. These children performed more accurately on simple abstract problems, but only 1 per cent could correctly answer an applied market maths problem that more than one third of working children solved,” the researchers reported.

The kids in Delhi and Kolkata markets also successfully solved hypothetical market-maths problems that increasingly became more complex but struggled with simple schoolbook tasks like single-digit division with a remainder (taught in Grade 4) and double-digit subtraction with a remainder (taught in Grade 2).

“These findings point to a broader failure of the pedagogical practices in India.... the pedagogy in place does not teach school students strategies to do maths in real-world settings,” the researchers reported.

“Our results suggest that the arithmetic skills acquired in markets extended beyond rote memorisation and were transferable to new problems within the realm of market transactions, but with some loss.”

Besides the Nobel-winning economist duo from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the team also comprises scholars from Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata, New York University, Harvard University and a journalist.

The findings, the researchers argue, not only call for a maths pedagogy that explicitly addresses such challenges through curricula but also calls for changes in how maths is introduced to children.

Maths curricula taught in primary school are meant to provide children with the concepts and skills that they need both for their daily lives and as a foundation for learning the higher maths in school at more advanced levels. Too often, however, formal schooling fails to achieve either of these goals.

Globally, it has been seen, learning outcomes remain poor despite large increases in school enrolment in many low-to-middle-income countries. A similar trend has been spotted in India too.