Let A equal...

[ladkyis]

Ellefurtle and Telemeister have both commented about maths and school and how dumb they felt when trying to wrestle with this subject. I am joining their club. I can ho0nestly say that in the 45 years since I left school I have never been asked to "let a equal" - anything. So when my grandson was struggling with it I asked him what he intended

Comments

[bluesman]

It would be a very liberal maths teacher indeed who just allowed your grandson do "useful" maths, as some people I know actually do use algebra in their jobs as Human Resources analysts - or they say they do.

We are taught a lot of irrelevant piffle at school, in among the useful stuff, which is why Frank Zappa referred to his schooldays as his "fake education."

Geometry was one of the few mathematical areas I was okay with as (a) I am a visual kind of chap and (b) everything had to add up to either 180 degrees or 360, so I made it fit. Pi was a mystery to me too, though - unless it was sausage pi or my mum's apple and blackberry (YUM!).

[starry_jen]

I completely agree with you Ladkyis. I didn't like school either, in fact I would go as far as to say I hated it but not because of the academic work which seemed relatively easy, but because I had to spend 6 hours a day with other children. On the other hand, very little that I learned in school has been useful. I think maths should be an optional subject at GCSE level the same as the sciences. Everything I now use, I learned in primary school and some stuff that I did need I had to learn outside school. Like what is APR and how to convert inches into millimetres!