Gambling Lessons

The latest bright idea from the Department of Education: lessons in gambling and the odds/probability of winning, or not as the case may be.

Genius - well done! That stuff is never covered in maths lessons after all, not that anyone has bothered to ask maths teachers around the country. During my teacher training I was first shown a worksheet or two on the topic, and have used or at the very least, discussed it when covering probability in class. In fact I purposely cover gambling and how the odds are stacked in favour of the bookies, casinos or bingo halls. The old phrase "you never see a poor bookmaker" springs to mind.

However the government clearly see this as a vote winner, and no doubt millions will be spent implementing this new "idea", with resources having to be written by expensive consultants, training having to be provided by expensive consultants, and then the printing/distribution of resources to all schools. All this will need paying for when maths departments up and down the country are perfectly capable of delivering what the resources they already have to hand.

The whole drive behind this new policy is that more and more people are apparently accruing mountains of debt with the numerous online gambling sites, from bingo to spread betting to poker, available to anyone who is prepared to hand over their bank details. Advertisements are all over the television for these sites, and one can't fail to think that there surely can't be a market for so many, but presumably there is as new sites seem to be advertised on almost a weekly basis.

In my opinion it's not the lack of understanding that more often than not you will end up losing money - I actually believe that the government underestimate the intelligence of much of the population (how much intelligence do you need to work out that you are unlikely to win?). The problem is two-fold:

1. The "Somebody's got to win, so why can't it be me?" attitude. This is fair enough, and is part of the reason that people have gambled away their earnings for hundreds and thousand of years.
2. "I want something for nothing". This is education's fault, or should I say, education policy-makers' fault. Students have left school with certificates oozing from every orifice for the last 15 or so years, many having not actually lifted so much as a finger to gain these "qualifications". In other words, school has taught them that they will be just fine whether they work or not, so when they can't get meaningful employment, they turn to gambling as a potential quick fix. Obviously not every young person leaves school with this attitude, but the fact that a record number of 18 to 24 year olds is currently unemployed would suggest that many are.

Gambling is a relatively healthy hobby, in moderation and kept within a gambler's means. The problem is that the more desperate one gets, the bigger the risks and the more they tend to lose. That is not a lack of understanding of gambling and the odds associated with it, that's looking for a quick fix. So why are we just about to waste millions of pounds implementing an expensive new policy that has been happening in classrooms up and down the land for years?

I'm not sure I'll ever understand those people up in Whitehall.