104 thoughts on “Dyscalculia and Me”

1. Ummm… if you 300 miles in 20 minutes, you’re going 900 mph, not 60 mph.

2. I’d like to add, re Cohen’s article — being a true dyscalculiaic means going through childhood with exasperated teachers and parents telling you that you absolutely have to learn this stuff they’re trying to teach you that isn’t sinking in, because you will have to know it when you grow up. But, as Cohen says, you learn to compensate. It’s like any disability; if you have vision problems, maybe you rely more on hearing. That’s how I heard what he was saying. I didn’t interpret it to mean that schools can just chuck math education altogether because it doesn’t matter.

   I think I could have benefited from a different sort of math education that would have matched my needs and abilities more than the math education I was offered, and I suspect that’s also true of a lot of the students in Los Angeles.

3. Oops, I left a word out.

   I are an engineer.

4. I wonder how many LA hs grads understand when they hear bush’s approval rating is 40%?

5. Heidi,

   I read 31 comments waiting for someone to point out the answer is 5 hours and not 20 minutes.

   Maha,

   Many of those posts were from you. Yep, you are math impaired. lol

6. Many of those posts were from you. Yep, you are math impaired. lol

   So do you laugh at blind people, too?

7. I understan you, Maha. I think Patricia and Toxmom had something, too. I hated math, but I love science and nature. I often wished I could have had a math “mentor” to at least give me the option of furthering my math so I would have had that career option, you see? But I didn’t. Starting with third grade I was belittled and left behind. I caught up a little, though, with an outstanding algebra teacher and made A’s and B’s two years in a row. Geometry – forget it. The poor guy didn’t know how to reach me and I cried after every test.

   Marky, the attitude you may be getting from some of these parents who dismiss math often comes from a deep sense of betrayal and belief that someone didn’t care enough to reach them. Or from their own sense of inadequacy. I’m sure you have enough understanding of human nature to get this? Some of the best math teachers I’ve known will sit down with that parent and tell them they completely understand where they’re coming from, but then go on and make their points about why it’s important in a way the parent will understand. It’s called communicating and I’m sure you make that effort. I understand your frustration. And you are right that math does take work and we Americans are notoriously lazy about study. Foreign language is hard, too, and we’re bad with that.

   The deeper question is, how do we find and encourage the teachers we need who can teach math so that more kids understand it? Excellent teachers have a thorough love and knowledge of their subject and a passion to share it. They also have an understanding of human nature and how the human brain works. Now how often do you find this in people? Are we encouraging the ones who have what it takes? Or are they diverted to other more lucrative and glamourous occupations.

   The other half of the equation is the parental input. But that’s another topic, right?

8. Frankly, marky’s attitude that “you could learn this if you just tried harder” is part of the problem. We all have different brains. Some brains don’t fit some subjects. I think I could have done a better job in math if I could have taken it more slowly, but I couldn’t keep up with the classes I was in. And if you can’t keep up, people just assume it’s because you aren’t trying, but that may not be the case. In my case, because I excelled in most of my other classes, my parents and my teachers assumed I was just being stubborn with math. That didn’t help, either.

9. I know. I had the same problem. That’s why I mentioned wishing I’d had a math “mentor.” Math is hard in a way that other subjects are not. If you’re smart in other areas, it’s like hitting your head against a brick wall and not understanding why. Everything else is understandable, so why not that? It’s baffling. Those like Marky, who find it easy, don’t understand this. The nearest I can come is to ask them how they do with learning foreign languages. If that’s hard for the, I tell them the feeling is similar. Greek to me!

10. maha, I am amazed at how this subject got people’s juices flowing. You touched a nerve with many of us on both sides of the question. Who would believe math would engender such passion? I went back to school at age 50-and, luckily, Social Workers didn’t have to take college algebra.
    Our education system is broken, and our current president is adding insult to injury by touting “no child’s left behind.”

11. Blindness, no. Its all relative. We all have handicaps.

    My handicap in school was Chemistry. I dabbled a little and realised I wasn’t wired for it. I was a whiz at math, but didn’t feel those who weren’t were any worse off.

    I will say, I would probably laugh at blind people if I were blind.

12. One more thing and I’m done for the night. In case this appears to be a “male/female” thing, let me assure you it isn’t! My two straight A college-age sons hate math, too. One was better at it than the other, but both are gifted in other ways – one in writing, the other in art. Their best friend barely survived math. One of my son helped him pass it. This best friend is an amazing songwriter. The whole town knows him as an extremely talented young man. Now, my point is: Could Mr. Marky write a song anyone would want to hear? Could Mr. Marky write a book anyone would want to read? Could he paint a painting someone would want to buy? (Sorry to be picking on you Marky. You’re simply representing all those math teachers who showed us no understanding) Could Mr. Marky originate and conduct a fascinating, well-run blog that others would frequent?
    Let’s keep some perspective here. “We all have different brains,” is right, Maha.

13. In my last comment I talked about my son and my experiences as his mother. But, let me tell you I excelled in math until I reached calculus in college, and I never understood it. I blamed it on myself until years later a friend who is very bright said he never understood calculus either and blamed it on the instructor. While I was not understanding calculus and found physics boring (my intended major), I was loving History 101 (which I had always hated his High School because history then was just memorizing dates). So, I found a new love and moved on. I write history and program in HTML. What’s the problem?

14. Hear, hear, Patricia! If it’s only Americans who hate math, as Marky stated, then since American students are human beings, it must be either the teachers or the culture. But what do we mean by culture? It’s an environment that does not question, or care, why a child is failing. I don’t mean to blame teachers here, either. There are so many outstanding, unspoken ones out there.

    But to say it’s because a child is not trying, is cruel. No child tries harder than the one who “doesn’t get it.” If they do give up, it’s because they are finally demoralized. I’m not talking about the ones who skip school, necessarily, although sometimes it’s discouragement that keeps them away. There’s a culture of fear and failure that takes over.
    Patricia, you were lucky that you did well in it in your earlier years. As in every “trauma” in early childhood, it is so often internalized that it’s hard to be objective until much later. If at all.

15. I don’t know if I got everything in skimming the posts, but it seems to me that Cohen is wrong in what he said. The girl will need to know algebra. As was pointed out, 2+2=4 is algebra, if it’s framed properly.

    I think that’s the problem for a lot of people. We teach readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmatic all the same way. Lots of rote exercises. As Robert Pirsig pointed out in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, kids generally don’t learn to write worth a damn, either. Nor to read. Nor to think critically, for that matter.

    We don’t frame the education properly. We fill out reams of paper with equations that, for the most part, we won’t remember later because they were rote. We are never taught from the other direction – that we have a need to fill.

    My son refused to read. Wouldn’t do it for love nor money. In the third grade, he realized that his older brother and I were talking about the stories in Marvel comics and he wanted to take part in those conversations. He started looking at the comics and trying to figure out what those words were in the bubbles and balloons. Pretty soon he was reading small books and by a few years later he was working his way through Robert Jordan books.

    The point being that he had a reason to learn. Once he did, he went looking for help from his parents, brother, teachers and anyone else who would help him.

    I don’t think everyone is born to do math or to write or to read equally well. I do think with the proper teacher and the proper method, the vast majority of us can get farther than we believe we can.

    And by the way, my wife can’t do fractions to save her soul, but she *gets* statistics (because of a great teacher) and that’s most of her job. She also knows that if she ever needed to, she could go back now and learn what she didn’t get for fractions. Again, because of that teacher.

16. Oh, and calculus? That’s a whole level harder than algebra. It’s like learning Russian. You not only have to learn the calculus, like Russian syntax, but you have to learn the basic alphabet in both instances. If you don’t get a teacher who will take the time to teach the baby steps, you’ll probably never learn the totality. And if you do have it in your head on the day of the finals, you won’t have it there by the end of the next semester break.

17. A couple years ago I tutored some community college students in a remedial algebra class. The college required it; I think the idea was that, to get a college degree, even an associate’s degree, one should be able to do early high-school math. A colleague tutored several other students in the same class.

    I learned some interesting things:

    – A lot of the trouble was that they didn’t quite get arithmetic — if they could do it at all, they had iffy spots. Fixing those earlier failures in education resolved many of the problems they thought they were having with algebra.

    – People are often initially afraid of or confused by the abstraction of an “x” or a “y” where there clearly should be a number. That doesn’t mean they can’t ever grasp or be comfortable with the use of symbols in mathematics. The purpose of using letters instead of numbers in the first place is to facilitate manipulations and generalizations that you can’t get to with simple arithmetic. Explain this and give examples. Work through problems with the student; then get the student to work through problems while you look on and help as needed; then get the student to work on problems while you’re not looking, and see how it goes. Lather, rinse, repeat. Algebra is a bit abstract and unfamiliar. You can’t just show it to people on the blackboard and expect them to understand it. They have to do it at least a few times to get the hang of it — but not so many times it gets boring.

    – People have trouble with story problems. Again, it’s that abstraction thing. They aren’t being taught _how_ to translate the familiar (“story”) problem into the language of mathematics. If I told you your credit card bank was adding an additional quarter percent to your APR and asked you to explain to me _in_Chamorro_ how many years in prison the bank CEO should serve and why, you probably couldn’t do it — but it wouldn’t be because you can’t do algebra. It would be because you can’t do the translation. The teacher in this remedial algebra class had found a sheet that someone had made up, that helped students _a_lot_ in changing word problems to math equations. I never had such a thing when I was learning math. It’s a great idea and should be expanded upon and taught to all students who struggle with algebra. Once you have the equations, they’re relatively easy to solve.

    – Patience, knowledge of math by the teacher or tutor, actually caring, enough empathy to understand what it is that the student doesn’t understand, and never acting like the student is stupid — these things overcame the wretched, math-hatred-inspiring “education” these students had had so far. I won’t say they ended up _loving_ math, but they were comfortable and more competent with it.

    – Some people probably are not built for much mathematical understanding, regardless of the teacher. I had a student who needed a calculator to add zero or multiply by one, no matter how many times he was taught how to do it. He seemed to have more ability in non-mathematical areas. But he was also one in thirty.

    – Even he was “making acceptable progress” by semester’s end, according to the teacher; another student (not mine) who had failed the course several times already and would not be allowed to repeat it if he failed once more, was responding very well to his tutor and ended up passing. I worked with him one class period and was surprised at how well he understood the material and how to use it. So I don’t think there’s a justification for dropping basic algebra as a requirement for graduation (at college or in high school), but I do think tutoring should be available for those who need it.

    – Far from the reverse — in my admittedly _very_ limited tutoring experience, women are _more_ apt than men at math. Every one of the women I tutored — these supposely boneheaded algebra failures — grasped the concepts fairly easily and was able to use them. The men struggled a little or a lot more.

    Finally — and this is my own opinion, not something I learned from tutoring: People do need to understand math _and_ Faulkner _and_ art _and_ grammar and all the rest. True, if you don’t have legs, you can’t dance. All right, if you don’t have a brain, you don’t have to learn algebra. Otherwise, quit whining (or not), get a better teacher, grit your teeth, and struggle through it (or discover it’s not so bad when it’s taught properly). You may _think_ you (or your offspring) have no use or need for algebra, or for scientific knowledge in the quantitative, mathematical, computational sense; you may _think_ you are quite logical and good at problem-solving and decision-making without this knowledge — but if do you think those things, you’re probably wrong, and it’s your math-impairment that prevents you from seeing that you’re wrong. It’s like the Girl Scout ad — when you understand math (and science, though that wasn’t part of the ad), you see the world through different eyes. You understand causes and effects. For instance, you can save money by adjusting how you drive, without taking a longer time to get where you’re going. If you understood math, including algebra, and some basic physics, you would see what to do without thinking about it too much; because you don’t, you don’t even know what questions to ask a mathematician or a physicist; you probably don’t even bring it up, because the idea doesn’t occur to you as a problem to solve with math and physics.

    On national and global levels, it is politicians who don’t understand math and science who are damaging the environment and the economy and generally making a mess of things. I’m not saying that the math- and science-challenged are destructive, or that politicans would be good people if they knew algebra and science. However, I do think our species will stand a better chance of surviving the next few centuries if we start educating children well, including a good grounding in math and science.

18. maha, I am amazed at how this subject got people’s juices flowing.

    There are conversations about this going on in other blogs. What I keep running into is the attitude that *if only* I understood how *important* math is, I would have learned it. What these people don’t grasp is that I *could not* learn it if my life depended on it. I have a big, fat learning disability that I can’t get around. Maybe if I’d been taught math some other way I would have turned out differently. Not knowing math IS a terrible handicap and I wish I did understand it. But insulting me and yelling at me about how important math is doesn’t change the fact that I CANNOT learn it any more than I can learn to fly by flapping my arms. Period. End of discussion.

19. My high school algebra teacher passed me with a D out of the goodness of her hearat. When I was 50 and going to college for an associate degree in business, Algebra was a required class. I started with a refresher course, then an intermediate class. I stressed, prayed and cried through all of this. I finally took the Algebra class during the summer because the fall session was going to be a mandatory calculater use class. I handed in my test on the final day, walked out of the room, and collapsed in tears against the wall. No matter how much I tried to stop crying I could not. The teacher came out after about ten minutes to tell me I got a B. At that I slid to the floor and cried all the more. I am crying now as I write this.
    But I want to tell you, passing algebra is the what I am most proud of. Giving birth to four children in six years-lots of fun, no problem. Having and raising smart college educated children was a breeze. Working as a restaurant manager for eight years was a breeze. There is nothing in my life that compares to passing algebra. Algebra taught me about the balances in life. How for every action there is a reaction. Algebra showed me the reason for rules and the importance of following them. Algebra taught me to be wary of the danger of not following sound theorum. It is hard to explain, but algebra gives so much meaning to me liberal, peace loving nature.

20. How for every action there is a reaction.

    I got that from Zen training. 🙂

21. If you want to keep this thread going. This is interesting.

    http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/18/students_learn_more_.html

    Have a math/physics joke for everyone. If you don’t find it funny, then you are more art/literature oriented. Which is not bad, actually.

    E=mc(squared) +/- 2

22. maha, you can learn algebra if you have the right teacher who knows how you learn. I’ve hated math since grade school because I couldn’t figure out how to do division. I had just moved to a new town and they were onto concepts that weren’t covered in my old school, instead of the teacher helping me to catch up, she just told me that I was stupid and lazy and moved on to the next kid. I’m serious, in front of the other students she said I was stupid and lazy. One night at home, I was sitting there crying trying to do my homework when my older sister sat with me to teach me. It was something simple like 2500 divided by 5 and I thought I had to do it all at once, so I’m counting out on my fingers; 5, 10, 15, 20 etc until I get to 2500…it takes awhile to do one problem that way and if you have 10 of them for your homework it’s gonna take all night. My sister was my teacher and I got A’s in that math class after that.

    I think the same is true for you and algebra, if you had the right teacher who knew that you learn best visually, they probably should have diagrammed problems out for you, or used spreadsheets which you find interesting.

    By the way, the example given earlier about the 300 mile trip with all the rest stops and the slow down through Atlanta etc etc is actually an excellent example of more complex algebra. It’s got lots of variables to take into consideration instead of the simple division of the first algebra example…that leads maha to believe it isn’t algebra when it is. Now you have to take into consideration that for 30 miles you will only be travelling on average 30mph for the Atlanta construcion, and then there are the 7 15 minute breaks, and the one hour lunch. So the calculation is
    {(300 – 30)÷60}+(30÷30)+(7*.25)+1=8.25 or 8hrs and 15mins

    I bet you could have figured all that out in your head, maha…that means you know how to do algebra.

23. Some great comments this morning! I’m really learning a lot and plan to save some of these posts. I couldn’t agree more with atablarasa and I totally understand you, hettiemae. I wish I’d had you as a teacher, dang!

24. I think the same is true for you and algebra, if you had the right teacher who knew that you learn best visually, they probably should have diagrammed problems out for you, or used spreadsheets which you find interesting.

    I think I could have learned math, yes, but my aversion became so extreme that now it would take a miracle.

    I bet you could have figured all that out in your head, maha

    No, I can’t do even simple addition or subtraction in my head. It’s fingers or a calculator, or nothin’.

25. No, I can’t do even simple addition or subtraction in my head. It’s fingers or a calculator, or nothin’.

    Actually, I got the answer using a calculator, so that isn’t what I meant…would you have been able to figure out that you have to subtract the 30 miles through Atlanta from the original 300 in your head? Only 270 miles will be travelled at 60mph, the other 30 is at 30mph. I think you would. The only part that I know my math hating son would find confusing is the .25 = 15 minutes. A quarter of the number 1 is .25, but a quarter of an hour is 15 minutes. So it’s like translating the word “quarter” between two languages with that one.

    Using a calculator doesn’t mean you can’t do algebra, doing algebra means you know which numbers to add, divide, or do other operations on. For instance I don’t have the multiplication tables memorized, so I use a calculator or my fingers for that. But I do know which numbers have to be plugged in where.

26. Donna,
    I had exactly the kind of teacher you mentioned while learning long division in 3rd grade. The difference between you and people like maha and me is that we did not have a sister to help us. We carried that feeling of failure for the rest of our school career (with the one exception of my high school algebra teacher). It takes a lot to get over that. Imagine how you would have fared if you had not had your sister! To this day, I look at long strings of math or word problems and refuse to even read it. But I still have the feeling that, if someone had taken the time with me, I would be at least half-way proficient.
    During some of my first retail jobs, in fact, I’d even freeze up while giving out change sometimes. Particularly to grouchy people!

27. People who do not know algebra will be astonished by this:

    http://trunks.secondfoundation.org/files/psychic.swf

    People who DO will have themselves a little chuckle.

    Which side would you rather be on?

28. There is no way to understand music except through rote memorization and practice. I don’t care if you’re Hillary Hahn or Billy Joe Armstrong: you get nowhere without mindless, mind-numbing repetition of concepts the conscious mind grasps in a second.

    Ditto algebra. You’re not supposed to enjoy everything connected with learning, even if it would nice if you could. You’re also not supposed to be talented at everything, even if that too would nice.

    But you do have to understand certain subjects at a minimum level in order to graduate with a high school diploma. Algebra and geometry are two of them. That is not a lot to ask.

    Why is math important for a high school grad to know? That is a silly question. Why is it important for a high school grad to learn how to write declarative sentences? How many jobs that require a HS education and no more make demands on writing skills beyond a waiter’s scribble on a check? For that matter how many jobs in construction require knowing how to discuss in iron in Lord of the Flies?

    The reason to learn, and understand, math is not practical. It is transcendentally human. It is that simple.

    As for adult mathphobes, there is simply no excuse for an educated grownup not to understand basic mathematics. None. Go and get a book and some software and educate yourself. You cannot claim any pretense to culture without it.

    You think I’m talking from the point of view of the mathematically un-phobic? I, too, am deeply untalented at math and had the very same low math scores maha describes. So what? As a grownup, I learned it was vital that I understand it, not because it impacted my job – ancient Latin is far more relevant – but because it was culturally important.

    So I learned algebra, geometry, trig, and some stats. It was hard, still is. Big deal. I wish I had to time to learn more. Not because I enjoy it, but because it provides more understanding of my culture.

29. Which side would you rather be on?

    Thanks for continuing to make me feel inadequate.

30. Your comment hurts because I know you’re right, tristero, but I don’t think you understand quite yet where some of us are coming from. “You’re not supposed to enjoy learning everything connected with learning.” I don’t think that’s what most of thought – and the fact that you would say this shows some patronage.

    Our point is that we tried so hard that we cried at night from frustration and embarrassment and still didn’t get anywhere.

    Okay, that was then. This is now. I find it very reassuring that people like you, and some others in the blog, say it’s still possible to learn. And that we still should learn it is something I will take seriously into consideration.

    In the meantime, how are we helping the kids of today who are failing?

31. There is no way to understand music except through rote memorization and practice. I don’t care if you’re Hillary Hahn or Billy Joe Armstrong: you get nowhere without mindless, mind-numbing repetition of concepts the conscious mind grasps in a second.

    I was born with a good sense of relative pitch and have a four-octave vocal range. I have performed in choruses in Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, with the American Sympony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, among others. I’ve even been in the chorus of an opera company (you should have seen me in the role of “cigarette girl” from “Carmen”). This meant memorizing lyrics in foreign languages, which was drudgery, but I am not averse to drudgery.

    I sight-read music reasonably well, but I do it by judging intervals. It’s the relative pitch thing. In spite of the fact that I can stay on pitch easily, I can’t tell you what key I’m singing in. Nor could I teach someone to stay on pitch; either you hear it or you don’t. I can recognize the difference between, say, harmonic thirds and harmonic fifths when I hear them, but don’t ask me to explain, say, chromatic tuning. For that matter, I’ve known people who can explain chromatic tuning but who can’t stay on pitch.

    This is a right-brain thing with me; I know how to do it, but I can’t translate it into language to explain it.

    For that matter, there have been great folk and blues musicians who couldn’t read music at all. Are you saying they don’t “understand” music? What is it they don’t “understand”?

    My point is that we all have different brains and there are many ways of approaching the same subject in order to “understand” it.

    Regarding math, I think many of the comments here are indicative of why I got no help with my learning disbility. No matter how many times I say THIS IS A LEARNING DISABILITY, people continue to assume I could learn if I just tried. I did try. I tried a lot. It didn’t work. Now, everybody bleep off.

32. “Our point is that we tried so hard that we cried at night from frustration and embarrassment and still didn’t get anywhere.”

    You think I didn’t have a similar reaction? My first marriage was to the daughter of an experimental physicist. Both she, her brother, her father, and to a lesser extent her mom and sister, were highly talented in math. My math illiteracy was a source of deep, deep embarassment. My ex-father-in-law, one of the kindest and most sensitive people I’ve ever known, was openly shocked. I loved him dearly, respected him and was quite ashamed. I know from that kind of humiliation.

    Maha,

    ” there have been great folk and blues musicians who couldn’t read music at all. Are you saying they don’t “understand” music? What is it they don’t “understand”?

    My point is that we all have different brains and there are many ways of approaching the same subject in order to “understand” it.”

    Are you saying that Robert Johnson, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Bessie Smith, Howlin’ Wolf or for that matter, Jimi Hendrix didn’t have to practice? The fact is they did, constantly, obsessively. That’s just about all they did.

    We all have different brains, indeed, but you wanna be a musician, you practice. The end. Whether you’re a kid growing up in an indigneous tribe in the Kalahari, or you’re a grown-up in an amateur choir that cares about its audience, you have to practice.

    Let’s take Hendrix, who like the other folks mentioned, couldn’t read music. By all accounts, Hendrix was no natural musician.
    So how did Jimi Hendrix get to become incontestably one of the finest musicians of the past fifty years?

    The same way Murray Perahia got to Carnegie Hall. Hendrix practiced literally 24/7. As a teenager, he took a guitar with him to the movies. His entire adult life, he often slept with a guitar next to his bed. He took it into the john with him. I am certain that the story that is told by Stevie Ray Vaughn’s wife could also be told by Jimi’s numerous lovers: when he was asleep, his fingers curled up into guitar positions and he seemed to be practicing scales.

    Let’s take Robert Johnson. When he was in his teens, he was such a lousy performer, Charlie Patton and Son House used to laugh him out of the juke houses. He went away for about a year (the exact amount of time is a matter of dispute), shacked up with someone who kept him from starving, but mostly studied and practiced guitar full time. When he returned to the jukes, he was so great, no one could believe it. That’s what concentrated practice does for you.

    Don’t believe these stories? I’ll give you not one but several references. And I can provide dozens of more examples. Deep musical understanding comes through serious practice. Period.

    Some people like yourself have considerable inherent musical talent, and that’s always a good thing. And no doubt, you can get great joy and pleasure from using it without rigorous discipline. And that is very,very important which I realize.

    But there’s only one way to become Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Kate Bush, PJ Harvey, Alicia de La Roccha, Renee Flemming, Maria Callas, etc etc etc etc. Do exactly what Robert and Jimi did. And what Ella, and Clara Schumann, and the Boulanger sisters, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe did.

    This doesn’t have to do with reading music, as if reading music matters to musicianship! This has to do with becoming an accomplished musician. I can explain to you in five seconds how to sing a difficult jazz scat line with or without looking at a score. It could take you weeks to perform it well even if you could read well.

    As for math, I don’t dispute you have a learning disability. I share that with you, maha, I really do. But we arrive at different conclusions. Your opinion is that it is all but impossible to overcome this defect. My view is that while that certainly is true in my case, that is no reason to stop trying. I firmly believe that algebra, etc. is as important to cultural literacy as Kafka, Billie Holiday, Hildegard von Bingen, and Munch.

    In fact, without understanding math and its importance, many important parts of artistic culture – not all, but many – are permanently closed to you. Not that that is the reason to study math. As with art, there are no valid “arguments from utility” to crack an algebra text. You don’t need to know who Memphis Minnie was any more than you need to know how to read Toni Morrison, discuss the causes of the War of 1812, retell Inuit creation tales, or know how to solve quadratics. None of this stuff will help most people earn a living or raise families.

    The only valid reason to learn math is tautological. You study math because it is self-evidently vital to your growth as a human being to study math. And if it’s hard, if it’s difficult, if it’s impossible, you still have to try.

    And I’m certain that anyone as obviously smart as you are can do far more math than you claim you can. And I’ll bet $100 to the political candidate of your choice that you can learn how to accurately calculate percentages within 6 weeks with focused, daily practice of a half hour.

33. We all have different brains, indeed, but you wanna be a musician, you practice. The end.

    You cotinue to assume that I could have learned math if I had tried harder. But my inability to learn was not from lack of trying. I could not do it the way I was taught. I might have learned it if I’d been taught in a different way.

    I have a quirky brain. I don’t believe I process information the way other people do. This is not an advantage, and it’s not a matter of being “smart.” It’s just odd.

    The only valid reason to learn math is tautological. You study math because it is self-evidently vital to your growth as a human being to study math. And if it’s hard, if it’s difficult, if it’s impossible, you still have to try.

    I could say the same thing about koan study.

    And I’m certain that anyone as obviously smart as you are can do far more math than you claim you can.

    Live with my head for half an hour, and you’ll say otherwise. Everybody assumes that I could learn the stuff. I’m telling you I have a black hole where math smarts are supposed to be.

    And I’ll bet $100 to the political candidate of your choice that you can learn how to accurately calculate percentages within 6 weeks with focused, daily practice of a half hour.

    Or, I could just keep doing them in Excel. But since I’m not doing department budgets any more it’s not something I ever have to do.

34. I am a pre-service high-school math teacher (I’m going to school to learn to teach math) and I am finding the many comment threads spawned by Mr. Cohen’s op-ed piece very insightful.

    My personal belief is that when a student does not understand a concept (be it math or English or whatever), it is incumbent upon the teacher to find a different way to express the concept so that the student can make the connection. Also, ideally, every student would have a personal teacher, when needed. Gabriela, for example, should have had a dedicated algebra tutor after her third time through the class.

    Math wears many faces, logic and problem-solving being two of them. Earlier in this thread, Maha mentioned that in a previous career she was a project manager, which certainly uses complex problem-solving math skills. The project managers I have known have had to juggle multiple unknowns in the form of timelines, personnel resources, and budgets; those who bring a project in on-time and on-budget are successful math practitioners (among other things).

    Maha, I am not trying to say that you don’t struggle with math, or that you don’t have a learning disability. However, you may be quite good at some areas of math that you aren’t giving yourself credit for.

35. Well, I personally wouldn’t accept the description in a problem area as a learning disability. It might be semantics but, I’d prefer to address any shortcomings in learning in specific areas as not being my cup of tea,over my head,challenged or any number of less stigmatizing and more accurate terms. Algebra is not my forte?

    Anyway, you didn’t come up short in the language skills.

    Here’s a little trick question for those who have gained command in the realm of Mathematics.

    If an American warplane drops 2— 500 lbs bombs on a wedding party of 35 innocent Iraqi’s, 20 of which are kurds, and 15 are sunnis, and all but 2 are killed…How many in the wedding party were terrorists?

36. The project managers I have known have had to juggle multiple unknowns in the form of timelines, personnel resources, and budgets; those who bring a project in on-time and on-budget are successful math practitioners (among other things).

    That’s right, and I did these things with charts and spreadsheets. I can work out some pretty complicated math problems if I can put them into a spreadsheet. Then it’s pure logic; if this value changes, then that value changes. That’s algebra, I realize. But in a spreadsheet, I can work it out because I can see all the steps and how they interrelate at once, and I also don’t get bogged down with the calculations, since the software does them. But I cannot fathom how to do the same thing with a piece of paper and a pencil. It’s like working blind.

37. Maha,

    ” ‘The only valid reason to learn math is tautological. You study math because it is self-evidently vital to your growth as a human being to study math. And if it’s hard, if it’s difficult, if it’s impossible, you still have to try.’

    “I could say the same thing about koan study.”

    There’s less difference than one might think.

38. There’s less difference than one might think.

    Oh, I realize that. What I know about physics I learned from Dogen Zenji. My point is that there are multiple ways to approach the same thing. Just because I bombed in math class doesn’t mean I am utterly incapable of appreciating the aesthetic elegance of existence (or “understanding” music, for that matter). I just get there my own way.

39. This is a right-brain thing with me; I know how to do it, but I can’t translate it into language to explain it.

    This is actually what I would say the problem is with alot of teachers. They know the subject very well but can not explain it to their students. This is my husband trying to help the kids with their homework. I’m a very good teacher to them because I know how they think and explain things in ways they understand. My husband usually just gets off track telling stories or something. When I told him not to do that, he said that is what he thought I was doing! I do tell stories, but they are related to what the homework is about, as examples. Sheesh!

    I think the reason why alot of us won’t accept your learning disability is because you are such a logical reasoning person, and that is what it takes to understand math. I think we are only testing to see if what you really mean is that you have a phobia and not an actual learning disability. You have made it clear that you are not afraid to try, but that you simply have a mental block when it comes to math. I believe you because the same thing happens to me when I tried to learn javascript after finding html a breeze. I assumed they would be the same but I read the same page over and over and couldn’t get it no matter how many times I read it. I tried a different book with the same results.

    A hint for those who don’t want to be astonished by Barry’s website and don’t especially understand algebra…it’s multiples of 9. Look at the symbols besides 9, 18, 27, 36, etc. They are all the same, so no matter what number you pick the answer you will get will be some multiple of 9 and of course they all have the same symbol so the symbol will be correct for the number you are thinking of.

40. you have a phobia and not an actual learning disability.

    It’s grown into the same thing. Through years of horrible educational experience I was conditioned to be unable to work math. (Fortunately I taught myself to read, or else I probably would be illiterate today.) I supposed it might be possible to be un-conditioned, but at this point of my life I don’t know how long I’ve got before senility kicks in (Alzheimer’s runs in the family; I assume it will get me eventually). I propose to use what’s left of my time and flagging mental resources to do what I know how to do.

41. The clay tablet, the stylus, the abacus, the pencil and paper, the calculator, the spreadsheet…these are all very good tools for number manipulation. Number manipulation is a good math skill to have, and it’s actually down near the bottom of the hierarchy of math understanding.

    An expression of a deeper (higher) level of math understanding is the ability to analyze and problem-solve. Facility in number manipulation (i.e., arithmetic) is often used as a gate-keeper to education of more in-depth concepts, even though being able to sum numbers quickly is not truly a pre-requisite to analysis.

    It’s entirely possible to be good at math without being able to do arithmetic in one’s head.

42. “That’s right, and I did these things with charts and spreadsheets. I can work out some pretty complicated math problems if I can put them into a spreadsheet. Then it’s pure logic; if this value changes, then that value changes. That’s algebra, I realize. But in a spreadsheet, I can work it out because I can see all the steps and how they interrelate at once, and I also don’t get bogged down with the calculations, since the software does them. But I cannot fathom how to do the same thing with a piece of paper and a pencil. It’s like working blind.”

    Maha, there’s nothing wrong with doing it that way. Nothing at all. You’re doing what works for you, and you’re getting the right answers. That IS mathematical ability and understanding. Being able to do arithmetic with pencil and paper, or in your head, is not the same thing and, while handy, is nowhere near as important (as Tracy pointed out above).

    Being able to do it all using algebraic symbols and manipulations, instead of a spreadsheet, would be necessary if you were, say, a scientist or a mathematician and had to communicate and prove things symbolically to others in the same field. It would be necessary if you were a teacher of the hard sciences or of math. For most other purposes, including the ones I alluded to in the last two paragraphs of my previous comment, reliance on a calculator, spreadsheet, or other hardware or software aid, is not only perfectly acceptable; it’s how scientists and engineers and even some mathematicians do much of their work.

    Back to your dancing analogy. If you don’t have legs, you can’t dance; but if you found yourself an excellent pair of artificial legs, learned how to use them, and endured the pain and other attendant difficulties, and went ahead and danced anyway when you needed to or wanted to — that’s beyond adequate. It’s profoundly admirable, if not outright heroic.

43. I keep coming back to the student’s attendance. I know, the sixth time she tries, she may well be unable to muster much gumption … but still.

    I’ve taught algebra to students who came into class with minimal backgrounds in math. The ones who attended class regularly did at least passably well. The ones whose attendance was spotty by and large did not do so well.

    In classes I taught in other subjects I’ve also had students who simply didn’t show up much. They didn’t demonstrate competence in the things that were being studied the days they were absent, and they had trouble with subsequent material that depended on at least some familiarity with the stuff they’d missed.

    If that happened two or three times, it was usually not disastrous; much more often than that, though, and things got pretty iffy.

    Now, the young woman in the article missed two-thirds of the class meetings.

    I don’t know how to teach anyone, in any subject, who only shows up one day out of three, while the rest of the class is progressing. Maybe someone else does; I just don’t see how, and maybe that’s my own failing.

    Kind regards,
    Dog, etc.

44. PS – That is not to say that there are people who have so hard a time with math that it’s essentially impossible.

    I’m just saying that before blaming the teachers, the administration, the curriculum, and so on, I would like to know if the student was in class, most of the time, the first time through.

    And I intended no insult to anyone writing here, which I’m concerned I may have thoughtlessly given. If I did, I certainly apologize.

    With kind regards,
    Dog, etc.
    searching for home

45. Oh Lord, please, please, let me type this correctly:

    “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.

46. Now, the young woman in the article missed two-thirds of the class meetings.

    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.

47. http://www.dyscalculiaforum.com 🙂

48. elly — Wow, it’s an official disease with list of symptoms! I have only about half of those symptoms, though. I don’t think I have a problem with time and direction, for example, and I can read clock faces. So maybe I just have a mild case.

49. I hope I didn’t sound angry; I certainly apologize if I did – it was not meant.

    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

50. (Wow, 99 comments. I did not read them all, apologies for redundancy.)

    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.

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