[4704] in Depressing_Thoughts
algebra
abbe@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abbe@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Fri Oct 28 03:16:15 1994
My sister is in 8th grade and was taking algebra. she decided to
switch into a lower math group, after struggling for a while with
simple things like simplification of (x + 5 + 2x) and the distributive
property. She has called me and asked me for help several times, and
i've thought that it was starting to make sense to her, and then she
decided to give up on it.
So I was talking to her about it, because i'm kind of disappointed
that she gave up on it, and I was trying to prove to her that she
could still learn this stuff and do it even if she wasn't taking the
class. I tried giving her a few examples to do, and then leading her
through them so that it had to start making more sense, and she just
wasn't getting it.. finally she just started crying and said "see, i
told you, i'm really stupid, i can't do math, i hate math."
I was trying to help her math self-esteem, and destroyed it instead.
:-/
