HOW ALGEBRA RUINS LIVES + My Conversation with “Math”

How Algebra Ruins Lives + My Conversation with “Math”

80 percent of high school dropouts cited their inability to pass Algebra I as the primary reason for leaving school.

Medium

(Somehow the photo above does not seem to fit the author’s name very well)

Anastasia Basil

Sep 25, 2016 · 7 min read

Iwas 32. I’d long suspected something was wrong, but this was a diagnosis meant for a child, not a grown woman. After eight weeks of embarrassing testing and observation, my assessment advisor delivered my results. He opened a fat file, pulled out a report, and asked what I wanted to hear first.

“I’ll take the bad news. I guess.”

“The bad news is, you have a learning disability.”

“What’s the good news?”

“The good news is, you have a learning disability.”

Then the assessor, whose name was George, said, “I want to show you something.” It was a graph with numbers. Verbal and comprehension scores that reflected my ability to perform complex language-based analogies and logical reasoning. I scored high. George asked if anyone had worked with me when I was a kid to develop what was (according to his fat report) a huge strength. No, I said. Not that I could remember. “Probably no one noticed because everyone was hyper-focused on your math weakness.”

“Truth is,” he said, “No tutor, no professor, no teacher in the world could ever have made you better at math.”

I’m sorry. What? What are you saying, George?

He showed me a graph of how my brain processes information (specifically working memory) and showed me the disconnect. “It’s like trying to cross from one mountain cliff to another,” he said. “It can’t be done without a bridge. You have no bridge, Anastasia.”

I walked out of his office in a fog. Decades of tears, of arguing with my dad when he tried to help me, the disappointed teachers, the parade of bad grades, the “shows little/no improvement” comments — I took them all to heart. I had been taught, effectively, to think the worst of myself: I was either really dumb or really lazy. I knew I wasn’t lazy because I tried SO hard. That left me, as a kid, to believe I was stupid. When really, all that time, I had no bridge.

Math is good. Math is important. Let’s all give math a hug. But we’re doing it wrong. We’re spending the first two decades of human development drilling kids with questions like: “If Johnny has 7 pancakes and Billy has 19, how many cats can they fit in a bag?” When what we should be asking is: “If Johnny is black, and Billy is white, how much more likely is it that Johnny will be shot by a policeman?”

Algebra and empathy. Both are important, but only one should be a required skill for moving forward in life. How often do you use quadratic equations to solve conflicts in team meetings? And yet algebra is treated as a necessary, indispensable, deeply important life skill. If we were a tribal culture we’d send our young men into the wilderness with a pencil and tell them not to come back until they can divide integers.

Raise your hand if your child feels tyrannized by abstract math. Raise your hand if you think our society would be better served if we spent more time learning skills that solve real-life problems — like finance, budgeting, and the ultimate life-skill: How not to be an asshole.

Here’s an idea: Since teaching impractical math takes up a lot of time, make it elective rather than mandatory. You math brains can go for it! Dive head first into those proofs, then go to college and build us a rocket to the moon. Teachers can use precious class time to teach practical math, such as personal finance. Most of us need time to nail the basics, time we’re not getting because teachers are under pressure to meet standards that require all students (regardless of aptitude) to master advanced mathematics.

My conversation with math:

Math: You want to be a first grade teacher? How do you expect to get into college with those math scores, let alone survive college math? (Laughs. Shakes head.)

You: But I would never use trigonometry as a first grade teacher. I’m really good with kids. I love literature, and my language and writing scores are high. I shine when I’m —

Math: You expect me to trust first graders with someone like you? You expect me to believe you’re a well-rounded, intelligent, trustworthy individual despite your math scores, and that you should have the same opportunities as my friend Barb here? Have you seen Barb’s SAT and ACT math scores?

You: I know Barb. She’s always been good at math. Math doesn’t make her cry.

Math: I make you cry?

You: Yes. I hate you. I’m sorry, but a lot of people hate you. You’re ruining our lives. You’re a life ruiner.

Math: You fail to see how beautiful I am. How powerful. Without me, modern civilization wouldn’t exist.

You: Butterflies are beautiful. And mountain tops. And books. And crayons. Have you ever watched a child use the Goldenrod crayon or Burnt Orange to color the rays of —

Math: Get out of here. And don’t come back. Get a warehouse job. Your dreams are dead.

We’re crushing talent. Because math. Because math assumes a person can’t have aptitude in other fields. Because math says trinomials are necessary for success. If we let go of the one-size-fits-all math standard, more kids would stay in school and more adults would head back to school later in life. Which is a good thing. Agreed? Agreed.

So here’s the plan: Stop trying to teach chickens to fly. Just stop. Exempt us from algebra and trigonometry. We’re happy down here pecking and scratching the dirt of decimals and percents. Let us go to college without this discriminating requirement. I promise we can contribute positively to society even though we never learned to find vertical asymptotes when graphing rational functions.

Some of you are apoplectic reading this. The thought of not requiring all Americans to master algebra has bulged your eyeballs to Looney Toons proportions. The steam blowing from your ears could boil corn. THE COUNTRY WILL GO DOWN THE TUBES! WE NEED MORE HIGHER MATH, NOT LESS! Calm down. I have a question: Why do you underestimate teachers and their ability to spot talent? They know aptitude when they see it, just like a sports scout. Math prowess does not go unnoticed. (You know who you are, you sexy math tiger you. Rawr.) Folks like me will never build a rocket but we just might build something else if math weren’t standing over us, with its foot crushing our sternum. Let us go, math. You’re being a jerk.————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

We think there is a lot of sense in what the author of this article writes. Her suggestions are worth further investigation. We also know from 33 years of experience that one type of READING instruction does not fit all children. Many Parents, especially Homeschool Parents, have found that ALPHA-PHONICS is a particularly good program for teaching solid phonics based reading. You can find out below why they know this: