re: #430 webevintage

What I wrote above:
I’m embarrassed that I could not get past the whole letters=numbers thing (finding the unknown…right?) though I have tried over the years to learn algebra I just can’t.
Maybe that makes me defensive.
Or maybe I’m just wired that way.

I like to read.
No, I love to read and I do not understand how anyone who can read does not enjoy reading for pleasure.
WTF?
How can that be?
My husband, who is quite the math guy, does not read for pleasure. He describes the act of reading as almost painful because, for him, it requires so much mental energy.
For me math is painful.
Very, very painful.
But see that is the thing…I cannot understand how anyone could not read for pleasure, you on the other hand see algebra as basic math and can’t imagine how someone could NOT be able to function without it.
Or not care.

Web, most people who like math read a lot also. I don’t understand this notion that being proficient in basic math is exclusive to being proficient to in other basic academics.

As to your woes in learning math…

I am actually very sympathetic. It has been my experience that many students were taught in ways that essentially reinforced that they would never learn it and end up blaming themselves.

I have had many, many students (in fact, thousands). I have met hundreds who have said the same thing you have just said. I have met exactly three whom I thought would just never get it.

We live in a nation where most math teachers don’t know the math they are required to teach themselves. They can parrot out of a book but they could not explain say why the distributive property works if they had a gun to their heads.

Most students are required to memorize concepts that were never made clear in the first place and then apply them without any proper guidance. I fully understand how that sets good people up for a cycle of failure.

However, with the right teacher, I am confident - and confident from my experience of tutoring calculus since I was twelve, that you are not in the category that could just never get algebra.