Winning the fight against the fearsome Al-Gebra!
From Living the Scientific Life:
NEW YORK — Shortly after midnight today, at JFK airport in New York City, a man was arrested while trying to board an international flight while in possession of a ruler, protractor, setsquare, slide rule, log tables, and a calculator. The 37-year-old man, whom officials declined to identify pending further investigation by the homeland security team, was revealed to be a math teacher in the New York City public school system.
At a press conference this morning, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez said he believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-Gebra movement. He is being charged with transporting weapons of math instruction.
“Al-Gebra is a fearsome cult,” Gonzalez said. “They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in search of absolute values. They use secret code names like ‘x’ and ‘y’ and refer to themselves as ‘unknowns,’ but we have determined that they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval, with co-ordinates in every country. They test the limits. As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say: ‘There are three sides to every triangle’.”
When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, “If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, he would have given us more fingers and toes.”
Yes, of course it’s a joke. You have to wonder if there is something wrong with math education if we all (okay maybe only most of us) live in fear of math class. Lord knows algebra, geometry, pre-calculus were torture for me. I managed to avoid calculus until grad school when I was forced to take a semester in summer school (it wasn’t bad, I lived, got a B).
Since math is so important to science, it is important to try to make math approachable to kids. I have a set of learning CDs for my kids (age appropriate of course, advanced trig for my four year old and differential equations for my eight year old … 
) to help them with aspects of math and such.
Like all things related to science the key I’ve found is to make the subject fun and relevant to the kids. Well as least as fun as it can be. My daughter is actually rather good at math and science (better then good IMHO). I hope her excitement isn’t stiffled by teachers (yes, Mrs Ballard … I mean you).
Tags: science humour, math humour, teaching math
3 Comments
I hate it when “teaching” stomps out the process of learning. Math was not my favorite subject, but I did well enough in it to be in the advanced classes. Which meant I had the opportunity to learn all sorts of types of math, instead of the rote drills kids in the basic classes got. Being challenged and inspired makes a big difference in how people feel about specific subjects.
People think Algebra is scary, wait until they try to make sense out of Trig. or Stats. heh.
My final two math teachers in high school and college killed my desire to learn any more math. My parents were quite disappointed but I just didn’t have it in me to tackle those inane parabolas anymore.
Right on Deb!
The approach to making learning fun is important to all subjects, not just science and math. Boy the torture of having to just read Shakepere, but not live or see it (I still don’t care for it, but that’s just personal preference).
Some teachers try hard, others don’t. Motivated parents can sometimes take up the slack, but what about those who can’t?
Again, this is why I started this blog. Science is fun. Making things explode is fun, watching stuff grow is fun. Heck, playing with soap bubbles in the park rocks. Food colouring in a bath … the list goes on.