Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Slippery Slope

Here we go again.

Can I tell you how much I love being in 8th grade again? Can I adequately express the thrill I feel as I learn the branches of government and the periodic table? Can I put into words the tingly anticipation I feel knowing there is a book report to be written over the weekend?

I think my true feelings were best expressed as I was venting to an colleague about the current math curriculum from Hell. Not to brag, but I was good at math in the day. In middle school I was walking to the high school to take math classes and I finished all math at the end of my sophomore year.

AND YET

It took me over an hour of trolling the Internet to get a clue as to how to do the current 8th grade math assignment. Why? Because in this math pamphlet (it would be an insult to printed materials to call it a book) there are no examples. None. Zero. ZIP. There aren't even any answers in the back (oh for the glory days of odd-numbered answers) to let you try to work it backwards from solution to problem. There is nothing. This pamphlet has problems. That's it.

And as I explained to both my friend and TeenTuna's principal in an email, although I was pretty good at math way back when, the opportunity simply doesn't arise in my daily work to find the equation of a line, slope, or point intercepts AND I NEED AN EXAMPLE. Just one.

Tom Hanks said, "There's no crying in baseball!"
I would like to add, "and there is no slope in singing."

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