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Let us climb peaks by all means, because their beauty attracts us; not because others have failed, nor because the summits stand 28000 ft above the sea…Let us approach the peaks with humility, and through finding the way to them…learn to solve their problems. Eric Shipton (1938)

Did you ever read a book called “The Number Devil”  by Hans Magnus Enzensberger? If you ever see a copy of it, grab it and have a look. In chapter one, Robert, the hero of the story, meets the Number Devil. The Number Devil explains to Robert that knowing a little bit of arithmetic, such as addition and subtraction, is quite useful for when the batteries of your calculator run out but really it has little to do with mathematics. How often do teachers fail to grasp the distinction? How often do we overstate the importance of the “skills” that we fail to recognize the importance of their application? It’s like a football team that focuses so much energy on their training sessions that they forget to turn up to play their game.