He found teaching primitive people woodworking and elementary arithmetic more exhausting than teaching elderly people how to use a cell phone.
The reason being, they couldn't count from one to one hundred, yet wanted to use a ruler to measure the size of wood and calculate how to process it further.
Ma Lin demanded they first learn Arabic numerals to understand the scales on a ruler.
However, most of them wanted to skip this step.
If they skip this step, how could he teach them the addition and subtraction with decimals?
If they don't use decimals, they would have to use three-digit addition and subtraction.
To do woodworking, at a minimum, they need to master three-digit addition and subtraction.
Among these people, some were quite clever, almost instantly able to learn three-digit addition and subtraction. Although they had never studied arithmetic, their mental skills used in daily life far exceeded elementary mathematics, making learning relatively easy.
