[The Drowning Witch]

In all honesty, I don't remember how to add fractions like that either

[achilles2000]

Another victim of the new math, perhaps? I was one of the experimented upon children for that and Chomsky's Transformational Grammar. It was easier overcoming the math deficit than the grammar deficit ;-)

[Clara Lou]

Well, if you aren't called on to do it very often, it's not surprising that you'd forget.
This incident is a 2-edged sword. The bashers are so anxious to bash the person in the article that they don't stop to think about who they are unintentionally bashing [like fellow conservatives, for instance].

[patton]

look for a least common denominator - the prime factorization of 3 is "3", and that of 4 is "2*2", so the LCD is "3*2*2", and thus "12". Mutiplying the numerator by the other primes as appropriate, we get "1*2*2+1*3" = "3+4" = "7". Note then that the prime factorization of the resultant numerator is "7", that of the denominator, "3*2*2", and that they have no factors in common, so the resultant needs no reduction, and the answer is "7/12".

This technique works for any two fractions, not just those that are so simple my dog could do it.

[calex59]

In all honesty, I don't remember how to add fractions like that either

Yes, but are you a member of the school system, let alone the president of a teachers union? No? Well then we won't hold it against you, BUT don't you think someone in our education system should be able to do this simple math question?