[arderkrag]

She looked down at the book, then looked up at me, and said...”What? Is that it? Is it really that easy?”. With that one question, the years of mental blocks came tumbling down, and from then on all new material was easy for her (with just a little explanation)..she ended up with a B as her final grade.

I had the same thing happen, with me passing my mental block in 10th grade. I ended up cracking through it so well I made straight A's in math from that point on and tutored it all my senior year. All it took was a very patient teacher who taught with an old slide rule he'd had since his own similar experience in high school back in the 60's.

[Reily]

All go read

Unknown Quantity
The Real and Imaginary History of Algebra
By John Derbyshire (He was a National Review contributor!)

If you are an Algebraphobe as my wife was it will change your perspective on the subject. It changed my wife's view, her comment was “That's what algebra is...its English grammar”. My reaction was a mental “Well Duh!”!