"You're looking at one. Now, I grew up in a rich family... However, I left home and I decided to do things on my own. It wasn't easy, but I have a ledger, which requires reading, writing, and math. I learned that in school. I went to university with money I earned on my own, and I saved that money up and I decided to buy land and get married. Am I rich beyond measure? Absolutely not, but I can tell you how to stretch a shilling beyond a handful of candy so that you can eat well and live in relative comfort. The point isn't to make you better at your job as much as it is to teach you how to take what you have earned and make it work for you. I have a house, I am to be married, I have chickens and a horse, and my bathtub is bigger than you are. My mother and father's money did not pay for those things. I built the house with my own hands, I cook my own meals, and I wouldn't have been able to do this without learning how to read and write and do mathematics. I wouldn't even be a teacher if I had not gone to school." He went to the black board and grabbed the erasures, dropped them unceremoniously onto the table in front of the kid. "Make yourself useful." He was not beyond pulling a kid by his ear if he had to... And then to Bram he said, "If you do your math, you can work your way up to the sling shot. But you have to do the work. How about you show Mister Beanpole how it is done? Go up to the blackboard and do the sums. You can do it."