IN DEFENSE OF COMMON SENSE
By Hetty Gray
June 1, 2025
# 314 “It figures…”
This is a column written about 20 years ago, but — reflecting on a sermon heard Memorial Day — it bears repeating! Here goes!
Her name was Edith Wiley. Some of you may remember her. She taught mathematics at Shelbyville Jr. High School for many years. As for me, I had her in the late 1950s. She was a little bit of a thing, but she ruled her classroom with the control of a seasoned military officer. To picture her, simply visualize Irene Ryan, Granny on “The Beverly Hillbillies.”
Miss Wiley as what my Grandmother called a spinster. She never married, but she took a keen interest in every child that walked into her third-floor room. She worked hard to explain the responsibilities of handling money. Although she followed the textbook, she also gave us lessons designed to prepare us to be “grown ups.” In short, she wanted us to have good lives.
Consider the extras that we learned from her. She taught us how to budget our money. We were assigned a set amount of “money” and then had to figure out how to make it last until the next payday. There was a jar on her desk and we each drew out a piece of paper on which was written an unexpected expense. It was up to us to adjust the money in order to cover it. It might be a medical bill or just a repair bill that was not foreseen.
She taught us how to use a checkbook and to balance it properly. Consider how she explained interest rates. She drilled it into our heads that most people pay interest. A strange statement? Not according to Miss Wiley. To her, if you were an apartment dweller, you paid rent to a landlord, and if you held a mortgage, you paid rent to the lender for the money borrowed to purchase a house. When I went home and told my Father, he agreed, but said that he had never heard it put in such simple terms. Edith Wiley was a “nuts and bolts” teacher, and she knew how to separate the important from the trivial —or, as a farmer would say, “the wheat from the chaff.”
Miss Wiley preached the value of savings. She claimed that every dollar saved would double in about ten years. We should save, even if we could put away only a little at a time. She told us that money was a touchy subject with parents, because no two families were equal in terms of dollars and cents. Nevertheless, the core facts held true. With that in mind, she encouraged each of us to be frugal and recognize that money “didn’t grow on trees.”
Do today’s young people understand the difference between a 15-year and a 30-year mortgage? Often, the slightly higher monthly payment of the shorter-term loan, when figured over the term of the loan, saves a lot of money – in the tens of thousands of dollars. (Bear in mind, this was in the 1950s.)
Do high school students know the facts about health coverage? College loans? Teens realize that they need car insurance, but do they understand the difference between whole life and term life insurance? Do they know which policy holds cash value? Do current teens understand the complete cost of car ownership?
Miss Wiley had a penchant for the automobile. I can still hear her! She loved to drive her “machine,” but she complained that passengers offered to pay only for gasoline. “Don’t they know that my machine uses oil and tires? Oil needs to be changed. Tires wear out. Gas money is just a part of it.”
When she admonished us about good driving habits, she took a logical step back to her pet peeve – tires! She chided us, especially the boys. She knew that it would not be long until we would learn to drive. “When you drive your parents’ car and peel the tires to show off at an intersection, you take miles off the tread!” She shook her head when she lamented that she had heard enough tread wear from outside her classroom window to drive to Alaska and back!
That said, she had a core purpose. She wanted us to comprehend that math would endure as a valuable tool in our everyday lives. She knew that women would use math both at home and at work. Men would figure board feet of lumber, square yards of concrete, invoices, commissions, gas mileage and taxes. Every job involved math. To her, math wasn’t a class to be passed and forgotten the day after the final test. Math lasted a lifetime. She was right.
If you really think about it, you used math countless times without even thinking about it. Perhaps, faced with an unwieldy problem, you honed your math skills. Never skip an opportunity to talk with children about the importance of math. They will thank you for it. Oh, maybe not now – but later! It’s time that our schools taught the basics of math, using pencils and paper so mistakes can be seen clearly and explained well. It takes a lot of brain power to wield a pencil on paper. Lots of brain cells are at work.
Make sure your children and grandchildren understand the value of math for everyday living. Mastering math makes good sense — common sense.
Think about it.