The Hindu Business Line : Beware the Ides of March

THESE are tough days for most people because there is the year-end work in offices, plus the menace that is all about `overs', which is yet to be over. Adding to one's plight is the summer heat, but what is most important is the exam fever at home. With a kid or two having to prepare for the e-days, most mummies and daddies, and aunties, uncles and grandpas are praying for deliverance that would come only after the last paper ends.

Previously, one had to think twice before phoning anybody, because if one of those mega-serials were on, it would be difficult to carry on any meaningful chat. Gone are the days when you would think of just dropping by to say hello. Visitors are unwelcome and telephone may remain unattended for long before somebody picks it up for its nuisance value, if only to answer in monosyllables, eager to end the conversation.

Now, when it is mid-March, you don't need a soothsayer to warn you of the `ides' because the predicament one goes through in the crucial weeks is a far cry from Caesar's `Veni Vidi Vici'. At your table, where daily routine grinds past, you come, you see and you `win' your salary — not so much for any great problem-solving, but for efficient paper-pushing and adding to general sense of assurance that there are men at their posts.

Which is why it is so amazing, though true, that many of those very staff who are no good at work, become erudite teachers back home, explaining to their wards where the capital of Timbuktu is, or how to simplify a bunch of square, curly, double and simple brackets, or the way Akbar promoted better governance.

There are all those age-old problems in math books, where one has to find the total area of a pathway that goes criss-cross in a lawn; or compute the number of days 8 men and 2 women will take to complete a job if 7 men and 4 women could do the same work in 15 days. You are not alone.

A new initiative in the US to set better standards for academic achievement in schools is "no child is left behind" — to periodically test students. What are today's kids expected to know? "Get a hint," says MSN's hompage by showing a sample of the Illinois State Board of Education's math test for 8th-graders:

For her school newspaper, the editor has a photo that has a height of 4" and a width of 6". She needs to enlarge the picture proportionally to fit a space with a height of 7". What will the new width be?

(a) 17"; (b) 14-1/2"; (c) 11-2/3"; (d) 10-1/2"; (e) 4-2/3".

An airplane flying at an altitude of 32,000 feet descends at a rate of 1,300 feet per minute. If the plane descends for 15 minutes, what would its altitude be in feet?

(a) 10,000 feet; (b) 12,500 feet; (c) 19,000 feet; (d) 19,500 feet; (e) 30,200 feet.

Which would result in the largest number?

(a) 10{+2} + 30{+2}; (b) 10{+4}; (c) (19 x 21) + (29 x 31); (d) 25 x 36; (e) 40{+2}.

Luke wants to buy a CD player that costs $56 including tax. He gets $10 a week for his allowance. He spends $3.50 a week and saves the rest. How many weeks will it take him to save enough money to buy the CD player?

(a) 6 weeks; (b) 7 weeks; (c) 8 weeks; (d) 9 weeks; (e) 10 weeks.

Thankfully, however, geography hasn't changed much, though to know where cotton is grown or copper mined may make your grey matter take a few more creases. And if you omitted to study the Constitution when you took your law paper during professional education, it may hit you back with a vengeance from a schoolbook.

If you had branched off to accounting and commerce, as most of those in finance now would have done, science books may all be looking strange. What happens when you mix sodium and chlorine may appear as esoteric a question as what happens to the Sensex if there is a rollback of fertiliser price hike? And the insides of the digestive system off the biology book can easily cause the unwary a mini indigestion.

Since it would not be advisable to skip languages, poems, grammar and so on, you might be dragging yourself well past midnight, to stand by your kid the next morning to quickly brief him or her even as he/ she is busy gulping a hurried breakfast before running off to school.

And when you go to your office, don't forget to take the book relevant for the next day's exam, so you have less surprises at night.

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Beware the Ides of March