I have a really serious problem. I’m not even being humorous at all. My future depends on it. I keep thinking maybe I’m just an idiot, but I know I’m not. I’m making A’s and B’s in everything… everything but Math. The thing is… *takes a deep breath* It’s basic math, and for the 2nd semester I am failing it. I know why. I know precisely why. Every time I start to do it, I pre-program myself to believe that I truely hate it, to hate it with everything within me. And I do. Truely. Passionately. The word problems make me so angry. I will literally say outloud, “What a stupid freaking question!” I can’t do it because I can’t get over how angry I am over its uselessness. I hate it so much and I’m not sure it’s because I really can’t do it… like maybe my brain is not able to process anything other than beautiful, free-flowing words, or is it because I just simply hate and despise it? It’s my 2nd semester!!! I’m acing everything. I understand everything. I’m so philosophical and can make an A-plus (see, i don’t even wanna use the plus sign) on a 20 page essay (just an example. I haven’t actually had one this semester) but simple little decimals and fractions make me so angry that I don’t want to do them. What is wrong with me? I know I could, but I hate them so bad. At least I think I can. I keep being proved wrong. What am I blaming math for? Why can’t I just do it? Why do I just wanna get it over with, even if I’m making a failing grade? Seriously, I get really really angry as soon as I see the first idiotically “simple” Math problem. I pity myself if I ever have algebra. hahaha… I think fractions are really stupid. Wait until I’m multiplying letters. Will it make me hate words too? Why can’t everyone just accept that I hate math and want nothing to do with it and see that I’m so smart in everything else I do? I can sing, I can dance, I can draw, paint, etc…, I can play two instruments, write a 480 page novel, but basic math beats me. Maybe I’m letting math win. Maybe I could beat math if I look at it that way. I need some construtive critism. I know that if I could get over this anger, this gut-wrentching, sadistic anger, towards numbers that I could do it. I’m not trying to be cute or funny. I SERIOUSLY, HONESTLY have pent-up anger towards Math or numbers… I’m not sure. I’m also not sure what can be done about it. It’s just so stupid and pointless. I don’t want to be a construction worker. I don’t want to count change for my McDonalds customers, so what’s the point of math for me. Sadly, if I don’t pass this easy, anger-invoking crap called Math *cringes* then I will have to choose between the two. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of anyone with an anger-oriented learning diability. Has anyone ever heard of a phobia of Math? I’m not being funny. I’m being completely serious. Dead serious. There’s something wrong with my brain.

Thank goodness you didn’t need help with your math homework.

Hee. Thank goodness math phobia is not hereditary; I’m very good at math. I took calculus in high school, which… got me through college physics, actually. (Such a coup; I struggled in science classes because I was taught science through rote memorization instead of in any logical way, so I took physics for dummies in college and didn’t learn any physics but already knew all the math to do the shortcuts on the exams.) I’ve had to use advanced math in my day job, but I’m apparently a special case. I’m not sure that calculus is useful at all in the Real World if you’re not an engineer or physicist, but I can see some practical applications for the basic ideas taught in algebra classes. Math is all very logical, but it’s taught in strange, illogical ways, like memorizing times tables will teach students any skills beyond how to memorize.

Seems to me that public education needs an overhaul, the whole system, but math and science classes in particular. Teaching by rote only gets students as far as the exams; after that, they don’t retain much. A friend of mine is in a master’s program for elementary ed. now and there’s a lot of debate over pedagogy and methodology for teaching young kids — it’s an interesting debate, and some school districts are making positive changes, but the inner-city schools with fewer resources are forced to rely on old pedagogies, which means… kids drop out. It seems to me that the algebra requirement is not unreasonable, but then, I took algebra in 8th grade [/gloat] …kids should be graduating with at least basic math and writing skills, though.

I’m still curious about what it’s like in those LA high-school algebra classes. But I’d look back to elementary school math too. The classes I taught were in a two-year college, and some of the students had trouble with things like subtraction — the more so when a problem resulted in a negative number (e.g., a problem like “12 – 21 = ?”). It seemed to me that they had been badly served not only by their high schools but by their elementary schools.

If a person is uncomfortable with problems on the level of the example above, many books might just as well never be opened. Are students getting the teaching they need in the early grades?

It may be altogether unrelated, but with median home prices in California well above half a million dollars and starting K-12 public school teacher salaries under 40 thousand, I wonder that anyone goes into teaching at all.

With kind regards,
Dog, etc.
searching for home

It isn’t just her, though. 44 percent of Los Angeles high school students flunk algebra the first time they take it, and a larger percentage of students who take it a second time flunk it the second time. Plus, apparently hundreds of students drop out without a diploma primarily because of the algebra requirement.

While in an ideal world it would be wonderful if all kids graduated high school with a year of algebra, if the requirement means that a substantial number of kids passed everything else and are without a diploma ONLY because of the algebra requirement, I’d like to see the school make a greater effort to get special help for these kids or drop the bleeping requirement. Most states don’t require a year of algebra for a high school diploma, I understand. It’s ridiculous to just keep sending the failing kids back to the same class for a fourth, fifth, or sixth time. There’s a saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

How about this: Instead of making the young woman take algebra 7 times until she quits, the school board needs first to take a step back and look at their entire math program, K-12; and second until they can do a better job of teaching the basics they should’t have an algebra requirement for a diploma.

Now, if you really believe no one is a complete human being until they can work algebra that’s fine, but I’m saying that a lot of us poor slobs do manage to get high school and even college diplomas in our disabled and math-impaired state, and we do go on to have reasonably successful lives in fields that don’t require much math. So while not ideal, it isn’t necessarily true that not passing high school algebra is a life sentence to the McDonald’s counter. (Although, truth be told, I passed high school algebra even though I couldn’t actually do algebra, but that’s another story.)

However, the real solution is not to get angry at us algebra cripples but to figure out how to do a better job teaching math.

“That is not to say that there AREN’T people who have so hard a time with math that it’s essentially impossible.”

I’m sure that there are.

I’m going to sit in the corner now.

– Dog, etc.