Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for September 15, 2020

This has become a learning experience more for Dad than Calvin.

Calvin may not know basic addition, but he wants his money!

It’s amazing that Calvin has any pennies at all.

Sometimes Calvin makes me think of the Jethro Tull’s album Thick As A Brick.

Maths just sat down in a corner and cried.

Wrong way of going about it, Dad! Maybe give Calvin 5 pennies, then give him 4 more and ask him to calculate how closer to being a billionaire he is now.

Just spank him well and he’ll start behaving like a normal person instead of fooling like a spoiled brat.

How to teach the unteachable…

Calvin is going to need a super-duper, professional financier.

After calculating Dad’s popularity ratings so often you’d think Calvin would be better at math.

OMG, those two are driving me crazy!

You can’t fool Calvin with your simple Jedi mind tricks!

Sometimes I wonder if Dad is just done but then I see strips like these and remember he really does love Calvin and wants him to be at his best. He’s just new to the whole fatherhood thing and needs to adjust. I love my own father to pieces and I want to be someone awesome like him but I know he needed to wait until me and my sister were in middle school to adjust to the role.

Calvin is not leaving this exercise without his four cents!

Hey Calvin is smarter than he looks. Right, Calvin, don’t let your chiseler dad swindle you out of your money! A better way to solve that math question is to say, Dad, no you have 8 pennies and YOU give me 7 pennies. How many pennies do you have left?

Today’s strip shows Calvin as both mature and immature. His maturity shows he has some knowledge of the adult world such as Dad’s steady paycheck and investments. His immaturity keeps him from realising the importance of math in this.

Calvin’s true genius is under appreciated here.

Somebody smack some sense into that kid.

Calvin is destined for a great future in the world of “high finance”, where his “higher math” will come in very handy indeed! :D

Calvin’s reasoning is actually correct.

This reminds me a lot of a conversation Blackadder had with Baldrick about “some” beans

Pulling my hair out now!

Good example dad, just Calvin not thinking that way on purpose, He is not interested.

With ‘Calvin Logic’, Dad’s math lesson doesn’t stand a chance.

Learning the hard way is a lot easier than most people think.

Just wait until he does his first tax return!

I sometimes think that Watterson was the king of demonstrating “aggressive ignorance” in this comic strip.

One of the best daily strips ever! Actually did a LOL instead of a simple smirk.

That’s the problem with teaching stuff to some people—they get things wrong, but they’re not entirely wrong. “Though this be madness, yet there is method in ’t.”

Daddy will soon be banging his head against the table.

In the “Calvin Gets Suspended” fanfic my brother and I wrote together, the Mom has better luck teaching Calvin basic arithmetic, using fingers to do so, as that method worked when we were little…

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13186025/1/Calvin-Gets-Suspended

Wording is important in math problems. “How many are going to St. Ives?”

Calvin has obviously not yet been exposed to Socialist ideology.

I see the future CFO of “Easy Money.com/offshoreaccts”

This is close the the Evil Roy Slade model of math, remember the apples & the neighbor ?

…close TO the….

Just ask “How many pennies are now on the table?”

Cal has the vocabulary of a 40-yr-old and the math skill of an ejit. An idiot savant, I guess.

Were yours.

LOL!

Calvin is such a Brat! This strip would be much better without him. I’m just echoing what everyone says about Shannon in Luann.

Abstract and concrete flow together in Calvin’s brain. He chooses whichever is best for him at the moment.

Mathematics becomes difficult when possessorship comes into the picture.

I hate math too.

And this is why persons for whom the universe revolves around them (no PUBLIC FIGURE names here of course) are completely unteachable: unless they see what it gets them, and immediately, no lesson is worth learning. And yes, there are those of us who will learn for the sake of learning.

Dad=Democrat,Calvin=Republican

I think Calvin’s dad is a lawyer but from Calvin’s perspective, he’s an IRS agent. Get used to it, kid.

Pretty clear that Calvin’s intelligence is NOT logico-mathematical.

8+4=12