[conservatism_IS_compassion]

``It's a vicious cycle,'' Fortmann said. ``People don't learn math very well in school, they avoid math while preparing to become grade-school teachers in college, and the cycle continues. What we're hoping to do here is break the cycle.''

Whenever our grade-school teacher would announce the arithmetic homework was a page of number-crunching problems, I'd groan along with the rest of the class.

But when she announced a page of word problems, the rest of the class would caterwaul, and I'd be relieved--there were so few of them on the page, and there was actually a reason to be interested in the problems.

I didn't actually learn that I was good at math--that math was really about the word problems I enjoyed much more than the number-crunch that I detested--until tenth grade.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

You'd get alarm from most too if an essay test was at hand vs a multiple guess test.