Say Yes To Algebra

I read the other day that there's a push to stop teaching algebra and higher maths to kids in school if they aren't good at it or aren't particularly interested in it, and that instead they should be taught practical math and how to make a budget and such. At first, I heard my thirteen-year-old self shout "Yesssssssss!  No more torturing the poets!"

Thirty-four year-old me said "Not so fast."  And this isn't coming from someone who looooved math in school.  This isn't coming from someone who solved quadratic equations for fun in her spare time.  I had the reputation among my classmates for being an utter nerd, and I was, but not so much with the numbers.  I mean, not at all with the numbers. 

I think taking this approach with algebra is a mistake.  Do I think everyone belongs in a trig or calculus class?  Well, no, but we already have a system in place where the kids who want to take the higher maths like that can elect to, and those who don't, take some other kind of math in senior high.  It's algebra they're wanting to turn into some high-powered thing, letting kids opt out in the younger grades, and take some other type of math that teaches them how to balance a checkbook and budget.

This might seem like a way to breathe for the kids like me, who struggled with a capital S-T-RUGGLED with pre-algebra, algebra 1 and algebra 2.  Hey, if you're not good at it, you don't have to do it.  I think this is a loser way of looking at things, all the way around.  Especially because say a kid struggles in algebra in seventh grade, opts out for this other "real-world math" they want to substitute (which sounds a lot like fifth grade basic math to me), and then realizes he or she has limited himself as far as college goes, because they don't reach the math requirements.  Then, they'll have a lot of catching up to do if they are willing to do the work to get to college.  Age 12 or 13 is awfully young to make that kind of decision for one's life.

Also, that's about the age where if a kid has gotten by on natural talent, the complexity of the math at hand starts putting potholes in a road that used to be smooth-sailing.  I don't think it hurts a kid to have to really work hard for something, like math, so they learn that when they find themselves in a problem, they work to solve it. They don't just walk away.  I know not every kid is going to grow up to be an engineer or a rocket scientist. But every single one of us faces in life problems where natural talent alone won't get us by.  Sometimes, we have to turn on our brains and think.  And learning algebra gives us the skills to be able to do just that.

My complicated and abusive relationship with math began in the first grade.  I remember throwing tantrums when I had to do a page of math problems at home.  At school, of course, I wouldn't throw tantrums, but that didn't make the act of math work any less painful.  My worst, worst, worst nightmare in first grade were the "blue pages" in my math workbook.  These were the unit-end tests we'd take before the ditto-copied (Yes!  Ditto machines, out in the hallway!) Math Tests that followed every unit.

It didn't matter if the lessons involved adding and subtracting single digit numbers, double digit numbers, or a mixture of both.  It was all torture.  Then "borrowing" was introduced into the mix, and I figured my numerical hell had broken loose.

That summer between first and second grades was the first summer of a few that I spent doing pages and pages of math, on MY time, in the SUMMER.  There were plenty of meltdowns.  My parents were at the end of their rope with me and math.  They threatened, they begged, they bribed.  I was sent to bed early.  Despite getting to bed at 8 pretty much every night over the summer, when my preschool-age younger sister got to stay up (and she could do MY math homework!!!), I still sucked hard at math.  And I have to say, it set me wrong on all things numbery for the better part of my life.

When word problems reared their fugly heads, I knew I was screwed.  They stymied me in the classroom, and by the time I got home from school, the last thing I wanted was hours of my dad tutoring me on word problems.  And I'm sure it was the last thing he wanted to do after working all day.  It was a recipe for disaster.  Then, then, then, then, on Saturday mornings, I'd find at my breakfast spot a page of Dad-made word problems, to be completed before I was allowed to watch Saturday morning cartoons.  I outgrew being excited to watch Saturday Morning Cartoons before I ever got good at solving word problems, whether they were out of the mathbook or whether Dad made them up.

And then I got to the seventh grade.  In some places, this is Middle School, in some places, it's Junior High.  Where I come from, seventh graders go to school in the same building as seniors.  This is immaterial. I'm pretty sure it's immaterial to the story I'm telling here.  But maybe not.

I was a smart enough kid in school.  I think I got more credit for smartitude than I deserved.  See, I was really good at the reading and the English and history kind of subjects.  I was in almost every music group I could be.  Those kinds of classes made me look a lot smarter than I was.  But math, beginning with pre-Algebra in seventh grade was as painful as barbed-wire toilet tissue.

Except.  This time, I don't think it was entirely my fault.  In seventh and eighth grades, the junior high pre-Algebra and Algebra I teacher was going through some personal crap that would derail any train, and we spent a lot of our pre-Algebra and Algebra I time playing fecking kickball.  I sucked as hard at kickball as I did at the actual math, but it was immaterial, because our tests we took weren't on kickball, they were on solving for X, and rise over run, and other such numbery bullshit.  And that's how I looked upon it.  Because by eighth grade, I'd begun swearing under my breath, and it's all Algebra's fault.

Oh my God.  I remember there was quite a flap among the parents of the kids in my class.  They went to the school principal.  They complained about the teacher.  At the time, I remember I was mortified.  Now that I'm a parent, I get it.  We weren't learning math.  Some of us who were bad at math and bad at kickball were even having our self-esteems pummelled by the kids who were a year ahead of us yet somehow in our math.  Yeah, I'm still bitter.  So anyway, back to the principal.  His answer for my mom in particular was that apparently, I was allowed to start school too early (I was three weeks shy of my fifth birthday when I went to kindergarten), and it had finally caught up with me, because my frontal lobes weren't developed enough to handle algebra.

This has stuck with me for twenty-some years.  My 'frontal lobes' being underdeveloped, because I heard my parents talking about it, and I stormed into the room and said 'Now Mr. [Principal] is commentating on my FRONTAL LOBES not being developed enough for math?  There was a special Cosby Show about this!  Clair told Rudy that with frontal lobes, you get whatcha get when ya get 'em!"

I guess the principal and I were thinking of different frontal lobes.  And it was really awkward.  And I'm pretty sure I was grounded for a while, but the grounding probably came from what I'm sure was a major meltdown when I brought home the next test, which surely had a number below 70 written at the top of it.

Ninth grade Algebra 2 and a different teacher really was no better.  In fact, it was pretty horrific.  The teacher adhered automaton-like to the textbook, which believe it or not, I really tried to learn from.  The whole lot of us in that Algebra 2 class, which was the last class of the day, routinely had trouble with the material.  There was a poster on the wall of the classroom that said "The Only Stupid Question Is The One You Don't Ask," so a few times, I was the dumbass who raised her hand and said "I don't understand."  And the teacher would suck a breath in through his teeth, his face and head would get beet-red, and he'd explain the lesson again, verbatim out of the textbook, but he'd change the numbers.  Then he'd glare at me and ask "Was that a good enough explanation for you, Miss Wynick?"  One time, I said "No, it wasn't.  You explained it just like you did before, just like it is written in the book, but you just changed the numbers.  I didn't understand it when you explained it with the original numbers, and I don't understand it when you explained it with different numbers.  I just don't understand!"  I was near tears, his face was at Three-Mile-Island Meltdown color, and I was sure I bought myself a one-way ticket to detention.  I didn't.  But I never got the problem explained to me any differently, and after that, I just learned to smile and nod during the lessons, which were going completely over my head, flirt with the boys I sat near, and figure on having my dad explain it so I'd at least pass the wretched class.

Or the madness would stop, and the school would stop letting me into the higher maths.  But just for the record, I wasn't the only derpaderp in that Algebra 2 class.  When we got to Matrices, nobody got it the way our teacher was explaining it to us, so he brought in The Big Gun:  The Senior High Math Teacher, who taught kids Geometry, Trig, and Calculus.  At least for that lesson, that teacher didn't let any frustration with us show.  HIS head didn't get all red when he was faced by twenty blank stares.  He just changed his approach, just like that, and damn.  Twenty lightbulbs went off.  And what do you know:  I distinctly remember that the Matrix test was the high water mark of my Algebra test experience.  Even when I wound up in that teacher's Trig class, two years later, and we were allowed to do matrices on our TI-81s, I did mine out by hand, because they were kind of fun.

I tell that long, long tale of woe not to castigate my junior high math teachers.  Looking back, I know I could have applied myself a lot more.  I really could have applied myself a lot better once I did get to Geometry, and Trig.  For some reason, Calc senior year wasn't a problem.  Yay, frontal lobes!  But in the younger grades, in algebra, when that foundation was being established, I had the unfortunate poker hand of having a pisspoor junior high attitude, not being naturally numerically inclined, having a distracted teacher or a teacher who had a hard time getting math down to my level, and an acute fear of either disappointing or looking stupid.

I might have failed algebra test after algebra test in junior high, but what I really failed to see was that maybe it's not always about solving for X.  There's a lot of emphasis placed on finding the answer, but the thing of it is, in algebra and in life, the more important thing is your thought process.  Xs and Ys and showing your work are ways to train your brain to solve complex problems.

Then there's actually solving for X and Y for solving for X and Y.  Maybe not in a quadratic equation, but in figuring out what time you need to leave your house to get to work or an appointment on time.  Every time you figure out gas mileage, you're solving for an X.  Every time you double a recipe, or figure out how many shingles for a roof, or how many gallons of paint for a room or square feet of carpet for a floor--- all solving for X and all practical.

Then there are the impractical higher maths only engineers use.  Trig.  Calculus.  Thing is, I sort of wish I still spoke Higher Math.  See, I knit.  And I make my own patterns sometimes.  I'm always having to re-size other people's designs, so I don't look like I'm wearing a box with sleeves.  I spend a lot of time trialling and erroring that would be all but eliminated with trig or calc.  

I think the main trouble with algebra and the higher maths is that sometimes they can seem really, really abstract, especially to kids who aren't naturally numerically inclined.  Instead of patting them on the butt and telling them it's okay, they're just not good at numbery things and send them off to "practical" math, which seems to be a code for dumbed-down math, why not at least help make Algebra practical for those kids?  They're too young maybe to bring the Xs and Ys out of the abstract and turn them into a concrete problem to be solved, so it seems like it's on us adults.  Will the 12 and 13 year-olds be pissy and snarly about it?  Yeah, because that's what 12 and 13 year-olds do.  But I also know that in the end, even the pissy, snarly kid is going to be really pumped when they figure something out, when they solve the problem, when it's made to matter to them.

Say yes to algebra for today's kids.  Make it matter to them.  Show them that they don't have to care about if Train A leaving Detroit at 6 :15, and Train B leaving Tallahassee at 8:15 colliding in Ohio or wherever.  But they do need to care that if they live thirty miles from their work, which they have to be at by 8 am, and the average speed limit on their route is 45, at what time do they need to leave their house.  And should they decide to leave late and speed, a speeding ticket costs such and such an amount, which is X percent of their weekly pay, plus gas is so much per gallon, and their vehicle gets this gas mileage, and has a tank so big, and then they have rent and groceries.  So can they afford to speed on the way to work?  Algebra.  It's all algebra.  And it's practical.