Algebra=Educational Suicide to the second power?
Okay, here’s the admission. I’m a home school mom and I hate math. Not the kind that creates balances in checkbooks, or exterminates mistakes from typical grocery lists, but the kind that requires an equation.
I get it, already… A mathematical equation is a sentence with numbers. I understand that. BUT… that is where the logic stops. When you write a sentence, there’s creativity at work in the process of creating the sentence structure and the words you use to make your point. The variable is whether or not to use a preposition. In math, it’s quite different.
There are few words in the English language that I don’t use in the same sentence. LOGIC and ME. (and) Algebra and ME. No matter how you divide it, multiply it, subtract it or add it… Logic and Algebra and me don’t make a sentence. And we don’t do equations either.
When my 8th grade Algebra teacher finally convinced me that I could do Algebra, I didn’t tell him that I’d have walked through FIRE for him, whether I understood it or not. He was THAT cute. Now, looking back… He’s still THAT cute, and I’m still up a tree, on the edge of a cliff when it comes to surviving the numbers game.
Did you hear me say I don’t DO Algebra?
The reality here is that there are very few tricks this old dog can’t do, and even fewer that I won’t attempt. I’ve looked over the Algebra book, even made several feeble attempts to read it… Do they write these things in GREEK? And none of it makes sense. Seriously, I was looking at a simple fraction problem (I do like working with fractions) and because the numbers suddenly jumped off the page and into a marching diaphragm of elephant print gummy somethings, all in an equation type of row, I knew I was doomed. I forgot how to multiply simple fractions. ARGH.
I can do it in decimals. Does that count?
So, on command, I took a literary approach to the problem and removed the preposition and inserted a proposition, and now I have one incredibly good engineer on the line who has promised to explain to me (in plain English) the premises of Algebra, problem by problem.
So, then… I get on the phone with my friend who shares with me that ALL mathematic equations are subtraction or division in some form. I wait… With baited breath for the simple solution he’s promising… But it doesn’t come… Instead he changes the subject and forgets to give me the solution I seek via, our conversation.
Please, someone tell me I can get my JD without the ALGEBRA class!
One Response to “Algebra=Educational Suicide to the second power?”
November 5th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
If you think you have Algebra headaches, I can painfully recall Calculus headaches that gave me permanent ‘math tics’! We will both survive to be non-math people! Yeah!!
Danielle
http://www.trailsofnature.blogspot.com
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