The Korean War-we won it in more ways than the obvious.

    On June 25, 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea with the intention of engulfing the entire nation and making it Communist.

   It took a while before America could respond. We did and beat the N. Koreans back. 

   The North Koreans had help, though. In fact, the Chinese did the fighting. If you talk to veterans who fought in both Korea and Vietnam, they will tell you Korea was far, far worse. Much of it was due to the Chinese. They sent millions of men to the war. They had far more more weapons and men than our soldiers and marines did. They were a tough, relentless foe.

  So, really, the war was China trying to annex the Korean peninsula. (they did the same thing again, in Vietnam, and won that one). The South Koreans didn't care to be taken over by yet another set of Asian dictators. If it hadn't been for Americans and other nations fighting, the entire peninsula would be just another enslaved vassal state of China, like Mongolia and Tibet.
   At the end of the war, a cease fire..NOT a surrender...was arranged. The Korean peninsula was split in half.

   China assumed the cease fire was an appeasement gesture to their superior forces. 

   To the South Koreans, it was a happy ending. 

   For us, we got:  South Korea-a bustling economic dynamo of electronic wizardry and cutting edge technology.

  China has: North Korea, aka Kim Jung Un-a pompous, portly dictator who lives in luxury while his people eat grass, (if they can find it.) 

Hands up who wants to abolish Algebra

Hands up who wants to abolish Algebra

    Remember when you sailed through Basic Math? It was easy, really. You thought you were pretty good at it. You had to work at it, of course, but it made sense.

    Then the Social Engineers stepped in. I honestly think people who change things like a math course, or a computer program, for that matter, do so only to justify their positions in the workforce. No change is necessary, but they need to look busy in order to keep their hefty paycheck.  Consider Microsoft, the poster child for “change for change’s sake’.  How many versions of Windows do we need? One, and it’s not 10 or 8 or Vista. For god’s sake, Windows 98 was perfect-well behaved and not so complex that you had to call IT.   How much of the vast unwieldy Windows mess do you really use? Very little.  Microsoft knows that, but they keep fucking around with it, making changes like using “Start” to stop a computer, and then, when people got used to using start to stop, got rid of the Start button altogether. They also stop supporting the older versions so that you are FORCED to spend a shitload of money for the New Improved Windows.  This is one, how the nerds demonstrate power over the rest of us, and is a perfect picture of how out of touch with the real world they truly are.

   I was one of the unfortunate Boomers who were used as guinea pigs in a botched 60’s era social experiment called New Math.

   Up until third grade, I’d done well in math. But half way through third grade, we were issued “new’ math textbooks. The “Old Math”, that of teaching a child how to do math, was “bad”. “New Math” was Good.

 Page one had Sets. Sets? There were diagrams of circles intersecting with other circles and what in the hell it was supposed to be about, I had no idea. Then we went on to “laws” with names like distributive. That made no sense to me, either. No one explained the Why of it. I’m betting the nuns were as puzzled as we were.  They were just there to make their comfortable, all expenses paid trip to Heaven justifiable by claiming to be ‘teachers’. I don’t ever recall a nun actually teaching me  something useful.

   Like any sales clerk, the nuns were issued a new curriculum and told to teach New Math. Obedience is the first thing they teach in Catholic school, and the nuns were most definitely that, despite the fact that they couldn’t teach math.

  Like “whole word reading”, this stuff was flashed in front of one’s eyes, according to a pre-ordained schedule and if you didn’t get it, no effort was made to help you. You were expected to understand at the nun’s teaching speed. If you didn’t get it today, tough shit, tomorrow we’re on the next step.  Obviously, child, you are Stupid, It can’t possibly be the Teacher’s fault that you don’t get it. (and yes, I was told that in front of my classmates.)

   It was equivalent to teaching a kid to swim by tossing him into an ocean full of sharks.

   To this day I have no idea what “New Math” was, other than some asshole’s way of selling text books (which is a very lucrative business).

   I was so traumatized by the nuns who couldn’t teach it, who shamed me for my inability to learn it, that I turned from a decent math student into one who has so terrified of the mystifying world of math that I avoided it at all possible. It has hampered me my entire life. I take comfort, though, that I am not alone. Not at all. I would say that the vast majority of Americans are like me: math phobes who Don’t Get It and Don’t Want To.

  Whether the social experiment was terminated because it was totally devoid of logic or so many kids were having problems with it, I have no idea. I really believe it was just another Government Grant, where, once the absorbers of the grant money disappeared, so did the math program.

    I say this because the New Math was abandoned three years later, and in  6^th grade I was thrown back into the old fashioned, mainstream math, complete with the old textbook (with all the answers penciled in) . It was like having spent three years floundering in trying to learn Chinese and then being sent to Peru. Like an armless man being thrown into a pool with the expectation of his swimming, I flunked it. But, as is still the case, if the kid is well behaved, he or she is passed onto the next grade, no matter if the kid demonstrates capability or not. Kiss ‘em and ship ‘em.

  I had to have a math credit in order to graduate High School, though, so I took Business Math.

   Business Math was useful. You learned to keep a check book. You learned percentages and how to figure if that 10% off was really a deal. Business math explained important stuff, stuff you were going to use daily, like paying your mortgage principle or negotiating a loan, calculating how much gas your car used. Business Math was for Dummies, and being considered a dummy, I wasn’t held to any standard other than passing the class. This I did, and graduated.

   When, at the ripe old age of 49 I finally had the time, money and desire to get my college degree, I knew I was going to have to take remedial math.

   For the next two math classes, I was blessed…truly…to have a kind, patient man named Mr. Roth as my professor. His remedial class was filled to the brim of folks just like me…people terrified of math. He understood us. He said, “There is no shame in counting on your fingers.” He had all of us stand at the blackboard (yes, still had blackboards, too) and do the following math problem: 21-7=?

   Well, I can do basic math, and so could everyone else. But then he asked us to demonstrate how we arrived at the answer.

   There were 17 people at the board.  They  had 17 different ways of getting the answer.

   THAT is the nubbin of the problem, and was his way of teaching us math. We all had a different mental pathway of doing math. Granted, 17 isn’t much of a sample but it sure in hell says SOMETHING, and that something is: the manipulation of mathematical concepts is NOT innate in us. Each of us using a different method of doing a simple subtraction means that while math is logic, we are not logical creatures.  We are creative, not logical.

  By this I mean, think of math as being a jungle. You are told to get through the jungle, and what should matter is the getting out, not how you do so. No matter if you hike, ride a horse, use a car, swing on vines from tree to tree,  swim in the rivers, fly over it…did you get out of the jungle? If yes, your method was right.

   But that isn’t how math is taught. Ideally, each student should have his or her own teacher to lead her through the complexities and intuition necessary to learn math.

   Back when algebra was invented by Arabs in the desert, they had all the time in the world necessary to create it. They also did the world an incredible favor-giving us the zero meant we didn’t have to do roman numerals anymore.

    Doing that, these days, is probably impossible. (oh, I hear you. "Tutors". Every tutor I saw in college was another college kid who could do math. I learned nothing from tutors because they Got it but couldn't teach it. Either.) Teachers are as befuddled by math and algebra as their students, but they’re being paid to get these kids through it as fast as possible. If you doubt me, see how often your teachers strike in September, rather than July. It’s all about the money. They want more for less.

  So they hue to a specific pathway through the mathematical jungle, one chosen by someone on the School Board, (one must use the curriculum one is given). If you can’t hike, or don’t know how to ride a horse,  or your car is out of gas, or the vines keep snapping under your weight or you are afraid to fly, you’re going to be lost in the jungle.

   Mr. Roth made me understand that I wasn’t the idiot, New Math was. I did well in remedial math. I took his next class, Pre-Algebra. This was a bit tougher, but again, Mr. Roth was that rarity-someone who could TEACH math and had the patience to explain it. Pre-Algebra still made sense. He made it easy.

   Full of confidence, I went on to Algebra 1. Now the path through the jungle began to get muddy and deep. My new teacher, a woman, spent a week or so reviewing the stuff we’d learned, and then for the rest of the quarter, we did ‘slope of the line’ stuff. To this day I have no idea why. I understand that there are four dimensions that makes a space/time continuum,  but the necessity of doing the same thing over and over again, with more complexity, solely to find out where a set of numbers are on the X and Y axis, makes no bloody sense whatsoever. How does this relate to everyday life? What does the answer MEAN?

   (As an aside, I'd been told I had to buy a  Very Expensive Graphing Calculator, one that did slope of the line. I was not allowed to USE it, though. That was just too much. I had to buy a $120 calculator only to enrich Texas Instruments.)

   Again, I found myself falling further and further behind, because I didn’t understand the WHY of doing this stuff. I was given a problem to solve that gave me two numbers (i.e. (25,40) and that was supposed to be the coordinates on a graph. What did the answer mean?

  As I’d learned in grade school, I was expected to make an intuitive leap to an understanding of something more complex. That didn’t happen, either.

   I slogged through, gaining a C in Algebra 1. I have never used it at any time in the years since.

   With a lot of over confidence, I signed up for Algebra II. Not “2”, Algebra II. Roman numerals, another math system that was cumbersome and stupid.

   The instructor, a man known to be an asshole, said to my college class: “I hate Algebra II.”  For a moment I was encouraged..at last, someone who gets it.

But no. “I hate Algebra II but they can’t find someone who can teach it so they stuck it on me. You’re all going to be coming to my Calculus class next quarter ANYWAY, so I’ll start teaching that”.

Oh my god, but in a way, yeah. Here was a guy who got it. Algebra is pretty much  worthless. But still…I was in calculus class for all intents and purposes.

  Oh, no, I didn’t pass the course. He began with ‘imaginary numbers’. I couldn’t grasp that concept and still cannot. Math is already imaginary to me, and I don’t have that sort of imagination.

   I passed one test, more through luck than capability.

Many-if not most-of my classmates had no problems with the course. Some slept through the class. This I attribute to my huge cohort of math phobes who’d avoided Algebra II not 2,  knowing full well they couldn’t hack it.  There were no math phobes in Algebra II not 2, because they had been smarter than me. They didn’t need it, why subject oneself to it? I worked my ass off and half way through I met with the teacher and said I am failing your course. I do not get it. I don’t get it.

He-for such a reputation as an asshole, he was kind to me. Did I need the credit in order to graduate? No. I had just taken it because I thought I needed it for biology. “You are here every day. You participate in class. You do your homework. I know you are working hard.  Will you accept a Pass/Fail grade?” Well, duhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

   So I “passed” Algebra II not 2 on merit, not ability.

   Which honestly, is the point.

  Do we NEED algebra? I suppose some lines of work do. But biologists? Not so much.

  What biologists need is Statistics.

  That word makes even math lovers cringe. The saying goes there are lies, damned lies, and Statistics, and it’s pretty much true.  There is a fear of Statistics that is, in my case, unwarranted. I suspect that the reason math lovers fear statistics is because it’s, well it’s something that’s real world IF (and I do mean upper case) it’s taught in real world context.

   I did well in Statistics, and it’s because I used it in a real world context.

   I wasn’t forced to sit in a classroom to learn statistics. I was out in the field as an intern, measuring. In a nutshell, that is what statistics is: measuring.  We began using statistics on Day 2. My husband helped me when I was home, and taught me using real world things, not soulless numbers on a page.

   What was the average weight of a family of ducklings? The Mean? The Median? How Confident was I in my answers?  How many ducklings did I weigh? If I had more ducklings would I be more confident that I was right?

  This was all real world stuff. It made sense and still makes sense, and I see the need for Statistics in biology every single day. Using statistics, I can go to a cattle rancher and tell him he needs to feed his cattle better feed because his animals aren’t fat enough. Using statistics, I can decide where and how high to build my house based on how many times the area flooded. Algebra will NEVER tell you information you need. 

  I hereby call for the abolishment of Algebra in all but a few cases. If you can’t teach it, you shouldn’t terrify students who aren’t going to get it. Instead of blunt force sedating kids with the slope of the line, they should teach statistics FIRST, because this is where you get the numbers-the data-in the first place. If a kid wants to learn how to manipulate those numbers further, THEN send him on to algebra et al.  After all, now that we have computers, let the damned thing do the thinking and just give me the answer. It’s not as if the nerds who do the programming have a realistic grasp on life anyway.