Algebra Homework
What do you think the most common cause of frustration is? If you ask a normal school age kid that question, what would you guess the top answer would be? Well, aside from the average stresses of being a kid (hey parents don’t forget it’s hard being a kid), it’s algebra. It is a very hard subject to grasp, for multiple reasons.
One of the top reasons is that after years of having the traditional facts and systems of math, they are told that everything is in fact completely different than they had been told. Its as if for your entire life you had learned that there are two dimensions, forward and back, left and right. Then suddenly you find out there is a whole other dimension, and that this new dimension causes normal movement not work. It borders on logical absurdity.
The fact is that while they are trying to process all these new concepts, the class keeps moving. It seems so easy for older people to forget what it is like to be completely baffled by these earlier concepts. The main reason for this is that after algebra, things get even more complex. For someone who has been through trigonometry to understand why algebra is difficult is significantly harder than for someone who didn’t really care for anything after algebra.
Most math teachers like math. Some of them even border on obsession on the subject. This intense devotion to their subject is one of the reason math teachers can be so devoted to their job. It’s practically necessary for them to think about their subject constantly. Like with anything, being familiar with something brings comfort. Because of their level of comfort with the subject, it is a stretch for them to relate to the discomfort of a new algebra student. This is not to say that there are not empathetic algebra teachers. Remember their first and primary goal is to teach, not just being experts in their subject.
Teaching methods can be challenging in this course as well. For the reasons we’ve already discussed the tradition of learning it out of a book simply does not work. Unless of course your child is a prodigy, in which case you should be trying to get a step ahead of them, not worrying about algebra. The best method is individual tutoring on challenging subjects, but this is a time intensive technique. A happy medium is lecture and book learning over the concepts, and using fun games and competition to get over the challenge of relating the concepts to the students.