Ruth Lamb

Ruth Lamb teaches numeracy and literacy at Silai. Ruth was brought up in Hampshire. She went into teacher training after school but soon left to work in personnel at Marks and Spencer. After this she returned to teaching, working with adults in community education.

"It's never too late to learn, it's never too late. And I do think maths is fun, its numeracy you see, I don't teach maths, I teach numeracy. How to have fun with numbers, how to be in control of the numbers. It's you that tells the three what to do. It's that sort of control and I think sometimes you see somebody with a maths problem, particularly at a higher level, percentages or something horrible like that, and all of a sudden you get this...all of a sudden there's a light behind the eyes and somebody says yeah! It's a wonderful sensation.

Numeracy is about being able to comprehend the world around you. I mean financial numeracy particularly. It's about dependency. For a lot of people to have to depend on other people, to work out...they've got a percentage thing to do, or whether they've got a good deal, pay on hire purchase or pay on a credit. Do they know what they're paying? Or do they just wait for the bill to come through and pay it? It's dependency and that's what basic skills was all about, trying to get people out of dependency."