Seriously, I learned basic RNs back in elementary school and they are one of the few things that I have literally never used for any serious purpose. All I do with them these days is use them to astound my (Chinese) students:
Me: (Writes “I” on the board) Hey guys, what’s this?
Them: “Eye”
Me: Nope! It’s one! Heh, what’s this? (writes “XIII” on the board)
Them: “Ecks-Eye-Eye-Eye!”
Me: Nope, it’s thirteen. HAHAHA!
(they look on in confusion)
I do know, as Mrs. Krabappel once said, what years certain motion pictures were copyrighted, but I really see no need for anyone to learn these stupid things. Have they been phased out yet?
In Spain yes, but Spanish is one of the languages in which centuries are written using Roman numerals; hence Cerveza Dos Equis (XX), a “special edition” beer which was launched by Cervecería Cuauhtémoc of Monterrey to celebrate the start of the 20th Century and was such a great success that they decided to un-limit the edition (the majority of widely-known Mexican beers are from Cuauhtémoc)
Reading old tombstones, cornerstones, and such.
Reading sundials.
Reading some clocks.
Constructing and reading outlines, statutes, and the like.
Denoting musical chord sequences.
Denoting successive versions of something.
I’m sorry you don’t think they’re helpful, but lots of us get good use out of them. I daresay you’ve gotten good use out of them as well, even if you didn’t think it was “serious.” There’s already too much ignorance in the world, kindly do not campaign to add ignorance of Roman numerals to it.
Clock faces, copyright notices, Superbowls, topic outlines, book chapters … Roman numerals are still pretty commonly used. Why is it stupid to teach children to understand something that they’re likely to encounter in our society?
Yes, my kids all learned them in grade school (first/second grade IIRC).
In addition to the other uses listed above, Roman numerals are used for page numbers as well. They are also useful for teaching an alternative representation of a well-known concept.
And that’s why my kids got them - an alternative representation of a well known concept. They reinforced addition and were used to teach equivalency in numbers.
I don’t think Roman numerals were a formal part of the curriculum when I was in school (1980s); I think my parents explained it, or else I figured it out for myself. And I certainly had at least one college classmate who couldn’t read them.
That said, I do think being able to read Roman numerals is one of those little cultural-literacy things that educated people should know, regardless of how often it’s necessary to use them.
I use them regularly and put them in a box called Stuff I Learned At School That Is Actually Quite Handy. Maybe it helps living in the Old World - we’re surrounded by monuments to stuff that are covered in roman numerals.
I asked my niece about this. According to her, they spent about 2 classes discussing it with a couple of take home assignment back in fifth or sixth grade. She’s going to start her senior year in a few weeks and it’s never been mentioned since.
Roman numerals are OK, but I had to give my kid’s teacher a piece of my mind one time, because she was planning on teaching them Arabic numerals. My kid is never going to speak Arabic!
I’m 27 and they were still explicitly teaching them when I was in school. (Would have learned Roman numerals somewhere in the late '80s to early '90s).
I wasn’t aware that anybody was taught to do actual computations with them. The Romans did, but they didn’t use the subtractive rule that makes the numbers briefer. I tried my hand once at learning to do arithmetic with the Attic system, which similarly used letters in the place of numbers, and it was a nightmare.
I maintain that they are useless, or at least unnecessary. The examples mentioned (copyright dates? who cares? Sundials? When was the last time you seriously used a sundial for anything other than decoration?) don’t pop up all that much in real life…or not very often, at least. And, even when they do, why should we be using Roman numerals instead of Arabic ones?
(the majority of widely-known Mexican beers are from Cuauhtémoc)