Why I'd put darts on timetable

The darts championships are on the telly again. Any time now some enterprising politician will suggest it would be a good idea to incorporate darts in the National Curriculum. It works. Some years ago I encountered a smallish group of likely lads whose enthusiasm for number crunching had long since passed. In desperation I set up a standard oche along one side of a classroom and the contract was that anyone who finished the allotted task to my satisfaction could spend the final ten minutes or so on the oche.

It began with being the first to score 301 and progressed through to finishing on a double or the bull. Teaching subtraction and division is much harder than addition and multiplication but nevertheless I gave it a go. The lads experienced more than doubles and trebles, with a few spectators standing behind the thrower discussing the best path to a finish.

More important than progress in maths was the effect on the lads themselves. They became more confident and assured about the school, walking tall among their envious, more academic contemporaries who had been known to look down on them as lads do. After they left school I heard that several had been snapped up by local darts clubs and one had even been appointed scorer.

Sadly, the freedom we teachers enjoyed at that time has been surpassed but I contend there is a place for supervised darts clubs perhaps during the lunch breaks and after school.

During the three or four years of the programme there was not one dart thrown carelessly, although the occasional spring back off the wire happened. In the world of school, some rules are tacitly accepted.

Norman Freeman, The Greenlands, Wombourne.