new vocabulary
of algebra
By Pam Linn
An appalling number of high school seniors are not going to get diplomas this spring because they haven’t been able to pass the state’s exit exam. Most of these students were done in not by the new essay portion of the test, as many expected, but by algebra.
Scores of educators, mathematicians, scientists and politicians have weighed in on the issue. How many of them could pass algebra today? How many of those actually have used algebra in their very productive, successful lives? Virtually none, I’ll bet.
The fact is, while mastering algebraic equations may be a beneficial mental exercise, its practical value is zip.
I say this because I passed algebra in the ninth grade by a fluke. Granted, I was a whiz at basic computation, which somehow made up for the fact that I never even came close to grasping algebraic concepts. But my teacher at Marymount wasn’t going to let me fail. When my grade slipped to a C, I was told to come to school on Saturdays, or get a tutor, whatever it took. My mother hired Mrs. Mapes to tutor me and miraculously I passed the final exam, even though, to this day, I still don’t quite get it.
My older sister and I were products of a culture that valued higher math for boys and humanities for girls. (My younger sister was not told this and became a fine teacher of algebra, geometry and calculus. Same gene pool. Go figure.) Great faith was placed in children of either gender with high IQ scores.
Arithmetic was taught by rote in grades one through four. This suited me because I easily memorized things orally, as do most children. Rhymes, songs, poetry, foreign languages and even multiplication tables slipped effortlessly into my brain where they remain today, error free, just the way I first heard and recited them in Sister Margaret’s class.
For generations of children who came later, things weren’t so easy. Rote learning fell out of favor; recitation was replaced with number lines, factor trees and modeling. Most children resorted to counting on fingers, and that’s just too darn slow. Many kids who are failing algebra today never really learned the multiplication tables because they weren’t made to say them out loud at the same time they saw them written on the board or on flash cards. They were denied an important skill they would need to master algebra.
Public high schools of my day didn’t require algebra or geometry for graduation, though a passing grade in each was needed for college entrance. Kids who weren’t going to college took business math. With barely acceptable grades in algebra and geometry but straight “A”s in everything else and plenty of extra credits, I was accepted at USC, but not without passing an entrance exam. I guess I was able to pull from memory enough basic math to squeak by.
Many years later, however, when working on my journalism degree, the rules had changed. I would need not one but two years of algebra and one of geometry to get into any California University. I signed up for an algebra review course at Pierce College. By the second week, I knew I was in trouble. The teacher spoke in a monotone at the pace of TV advertising disclaimers. He would pause for questions. I never asked, not having heard enough to know what I didn’t understand. He said, I’ll slow down when we get to the hard stuff. You mean it gets worse than this? I gave up.
Now my grandson is in sixth grade. They are already doing algebra. I follow along in his textbook but they’ve changed all the words. There are words in there that defy dictionary definitions. I could come up with the answers if only I could understand the questions. “Use a factor tree to write the prime factorization of 405.” Huh? My native language is English, and even I’m getting bogged down in needlessly complex nomenclature. What happens to all those kids whose families speak only Spanish? How can Mama or Tia or Abuela help Rosa with her homework?
No wonder we see photos of teenagers face down on their desks in class. While I never would have dared to sleep at my desk, I know there were times when, fully upright, my eyes glazed over and I zoned out, coming to only when I heard a familiar word.
But I’m determined to master this, so I follow the sixth-grade text, looking up the strange vocabulary. And sometimes when my grandson is running out of time for his homework, I jump in with answers about fractions and decimals and percentages. You know, the things we use in our daily lives.
And he’ll say, Grandma, how did you do that so fast? And, eyes heavenward, I give thanks to Sister Margaret.