I’d like to help. I don’t do personal consultations, but if you can explain your problem here, I’ll be happy to try to help. The more specific you can be, the more you will start understanding your own problem. “I don’t get fractions” for example is not specific. “I don”t understand why you can’t add unlike terms” is more specific.

As far as being a dumbass, I reserve that word for people who are over 18, are closed-minded, and insist that their wrong ideas have to be accepted by everyone else (think Fox News). So not understanding math doesn’t make anyone a dumbass, but using bad math to try to prove a false idea is correct makes someone a dumbass. I don’t think this is your problem, Ana.

The fact that you are asking for help shows that you are probably smarter than most people who have problems with math. Once you have finished reading this series on What If I Fail Ninth Grade Math write back, OK?

And thought the year I’ve been seeing tutors, doing practice problems and trying my hardest to pass because I knew how hard the class was, but it wasn’t enough. Now I strive only to finish my classes, after that I can go back to enjoying playing my 3rd level sudoku problems; but for now I have to strain myself, to do just one of the hardest problems to appease them. It’s not that I don’t try, believe me on that one. It’s just that people have an expectation that I can do something better then what my hardest provides them. And because of that they think I’m either lazy or dumb.

Interesting comment.

The world is full of people who “can’t do” something. I was probably at least as bad as you at math at some time, and felt the same way. I was also the fat kid who couldn’t get up the rope. I still can’t get up the rope. I couldn’t get up the rope when I was slim and fit, either. Just one of those things, I guess.

But I can say this – if I really wanted to get up that rope, even though I am still scared of heights – I’d get up the freakin’ rope, and not make excuses about how I don’t like “you-can-do-it speeches”. I don’t care what anyone can do or not, but I think one of the worst things in life is that “excuse” mentality.

To be fair, I feel your pain about those stupid speeches, too. You didn’t read any of those useless, pap, feel-good speeches here, pal. Do I look like freakin’ Wayne Dyer? I don’t tell anyone what they could, should, or shouldn’t do. I just show them how they can do it if they want to. You either learn it or you don’t, that’s all.

I was “gifted” in Humanities subjects, too – if you can believe my parents and some of my teachers. But I can’t. “Gifted” is one of the most moronic terms I can think of, and it is strictly a subjective term.

You “can’t do” math, yet you got an A in Bio? Which teacher was playing you? Bio without math? I got plenty of A’s in Mickey-Mouse courses in college without being good at math. Didn’t mean they meant anything, though.

In case you didn’t read anything else at MathMojo.com or these Chronicles, if you are failing math constantly, and you “bet you’ll keep failing maths,” could it have anything to do with the fact that the way they teach and the way you learn are just a bad match? There are millions of kids suffering from this, who think they suck at math. The stigma is a hard one to break.

But if you follow MathMojo at all, you know the answer does not lie in schools. Read books about math that are not “normal.” Once you get turned on to what math really is (it has nothing to do with the crap you are learning in school – especially the “remedial” nonsense. Remedial is generally just more of the same that didn’t work before, but at a slower pace, with more blame on the student. It’s like Robinson Crusoe and Friday – since Friday didn’t speak English, Crusoe just spoke slower and louder, somehow thinking that made sense. It doesn’t. But I digress, again…) you will enter a world that your teachers don’t even suspect is there.

Math is mind. If you are “no good” at math, you are “no good” at mind, and clearly that isn’t the case.

Kevin, the goons are training an entire generation not to even be able to add or subtract on their fingers. A lot of kids are trained to be dependent on calculators. Most of them will grow up to be idiots (then again, that’s not so different from any other generation, is it?) So what makes you feel you are so especially incompetent?

Look, in your entire comment, you didn’t once mention anything you actually did (besides throw yourself to the mercy of the system that never helped you in the first place) to improve your math. Have you read any of the books mentioned in these posts? Have you even been to the library or a good bookstore and looked in the math, or games section (where they have recreational math books?)

Before you throw in the towel and say you are content to be intellectually handicapped for the rest of your life because you don’t get maths, and before you actually think you can convince anyone that it is “everyone else’s problem”, at least face up to it and see that the only one it is a problem to is you. You may not care about it much, and of course that’s your right. But people who don’t care about something don’t usually write in to a blog about it, eh? I respect you for actually looking for help. Now you can decide if you want to take it or not.

If I sound harsh, it’s because I hear the same thing over and over from a lot of smart kids. I think too many adults give them the “you-can-do-it” speech, or make them feel intellectually inferior, or coddle them, or give them the wrong solutions and then blame the kid. But sometimes young people can take more reality if they hear it from someone who won’t sugar-coat it and won’t lie to them. Then they begin to “get” it.

Kevin, I have nothing to lose if you don’t learn math. I won’t feel like a “failure” if some kid doesn’t “get” it. And I don’t want to convince you that the world will end if you don’t get math. That’s what this whole series of posts is about. Keep reading them, because the next two parts in this series may have some help for you. They will at least let you know that I could care less what kind of grades a kid ever got at anything.

As far as not being able to add without your fingers. So what? But if you want to be able to conceptualize numbers in your head, may I suggest that you start with the lessons on the abax at MathMojo.com.

I wish you all the success in the world, Kevin.

Yours truly,

Brian Foley (a.k.a. Professor Homunculus)