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Bad Lessons Learned in School
“ALEGEBRA HELPS YOU THINK”

September 08, 2005

My 10th grade math teacher told us that. Nice guy, really knew his quadratic equations and such, but he was wrong, wrong, WRONG. Algebra does not “help” you think—it forces your thinking down a narrow, rigid alley of variables, equivalents and multiples. It replaces ideas with integers and feelings with formulas. Did Van Gogh solve differential equations? Did Foucault integrate trig functions? Did Steinbeck solve simultaneous equations? I think not. [AP]