I was forced to take algebra at a Catholic school in Detroit in about 1957. I struggled and struggled with it and even with help from my parents I was on the cusp of flunking. My aunt was a big shot in the order of nuns who taught us, so my mother called her sister and threw herself on the mercy of the nuns. They agreed to pass me with a D- if we agreed that I’d never take math again. I’ll be 75 next week and to date, I’ve never needed it.
“I was forced to take algebra at a Catholic school in Detroit in about 1957. I struggled and struggled with it and even with help from my parents I was on the cusp of flunking.”
Same here, until I had an engineer show me how using his own methods. The schools are packed with “teachers” who don’t know how to do algebra and teach from the teachers guide. They can’t explain it, can’t do the equations and certainly can’t teach others.
I took my algebra in the 60’s and remember it as hard to master and I really didn’t see a need for it. In most of my professional life, I have had to rely greatly on math, but don’t ever remember having to use algebra.
Algebra was the only F I ever made. It never made that much sense to me.
I was an A/B student that barely opened a book for all the other subjects.
To this day, I don’t recall ever needing it.
The problem was with the teacher, not you. I could teach you basic Algebra in 10 minutes. It’s so logical it’s ridiculous.
The problem being addressed in this article, though, is the fact that the students they are trying to “help” can’t learn Algebra because they never learned basic arithmetic. If you don’t know arithmetic, learning Algebra is darn near impossible.
And I guess you never 'needed' those lost opportunities due to math illiteracy.
1+1+1+1 ...
0+0+0+0 ...
If things exist, but we are unaware they exist, then they do not exist.
Exist = Not Exist
Folks told me they never needed to read either.
“They agreed to pass me with a D- if we agreed that I’d never take math again. I’ll be 75 next week and to date, I’ve never needed it.”
Requiring algebra and other higher math is simply weeding out the dummies in college. Who wants a surgeon working on them who is too dumb to understand basic algebra? For what it’s worth, I never could do algebra, either.