Recently I was asked by someone over the internet what size primary school desks should be. I was rather bemused by this, as the obvious question is What size are the children who are going to sit on them?


When I started work in Southern Sudan in 1982, we were running a secondary school in a school built to be a primary school. Not only that but almost all the students were older than average and adult. And they were mainly Dinkas or Nuers who are taller on average and have longer legs in ratio to their bodies than most of the rest of us. You and a Dinka may be same size sitting, but you stand up he or she will tower over you. Sudanese bicyles are standardised at 28" rather than 26".

Imagine our problem then when we found that not only was it a primary school, but all the furniture was for primary children. 2 m tall on a chair meant for a 6 year old! The human body does fold in strange ways.

The reluctance to solve a problem on the spot by simply measuring has often surprised me. From steps in a staircase which all have different pitches (common in Sudan) to toilets that were put at angles or sizes that resemble no existing human species. In Uganda once I asked for a toilet in the refugee camp to be built up from the 'squatter' to something I could sit on. The person who did it made it taper upwards to a point, like an inverted funnel.

Going wider afield, you have shower rooms with no hooks to hand your clothes on and (noted before) hotel bedroom lights that require you to get out of bed to put them off.

Occasionally common sense deserts the best of us, as several attempts to trace out a big roundabout in a resource centre showed. No one seemed to remember that you just need a long string fixed at the centre and then walk around it.

But that is part of the total disconnect between school maths and the real world which I have often written about before.