So how much of a role does educational background really play?
Prepared for print by Zivia Reischer
Since my formal general education had ended after eighth grade, I signed up to take Machon L’Parnasa’s math workshop in preparation for the Touro placement test.
On the first day, the professor handed me a page of math problems. Some of the examples looked familiar; I had some vague memories about finding common denominators in order to add fractions. And maybe there was some kind of rule about flipping the top number and bottom number? Not that I could remember when to apply it.
Then there were math functions that I did not even pretend to know, like basic algebra, exponents, absolute value, and my old nemesis — word problems.
I completed the examples to the best of my ability and handed it in. When the professor scanned my work, he didn’t look very impressed. Apparently there are systems for working out math problems, which, incidentally, are not always read left to right. It was clear from my work that I didn’t know anything about the order of operations. “You never heard of PEMDAS?” he demanded. I hadn’t, so that clue didn’t help me. Eventually I got ahold of a fifth-grade math book; that helped a lot. But it all left me somewhat conflicted. Even coming in with zero background, I managed to catch up pretty quickly and did very well in my math courses. So were all the hours devoted to math in typical school systems really necessary?
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