What if I Fail 9th Grade Math? (Part 5)

This is a continuation from the previous posts:

• What if I Fail 9th Grade Math? (Part 1)
• What if I Fail 9th Grade Math? (Part 2)
• What if I Fail 9th Grade Math? (Part 3)
• What if I Fail 9th Grade Math? (Part 4)

A reader (Trevor) wrote in:

i am going to fail math 9 . what ill happen if i fail. i cant go to summer school my family refuses to take me. if anyone knows if i will go to the 10th grade or will be in 9th again please tell me

thank u.

Professor Homunculus sez:

Trevor,

There’s no way for me to tell you what your school will decide. Each school is different. Your family refuses to take you? Man, I feel for you – your school is not supporting you, your family doesn’t sound like it is either – but don’t worry, because the most important part is - that’s you.

You obviously are taking the situation seriously.

Let me tell you a story. There’s a guy I know who had a similar problem. He wasn’t failing, though. As a matter of fact, his grades were great. He just finished his junior year in high school. But his father was a “simple” kind of guy, and didn’t want the kid to go to college. It was too “fancy” for their family. It wasn’t exactly a family priority.

Now this kid wanted to get to college real bad. He loved learning and was very smart. His school was in a rural area of upstate New York, and just having good grades from that “hick” school back then wouldn’t help you get in to college. There were scholarships for kids like him back then, but he knew his family wasn’t going to help him get one.

He didn’t let that stop him. He wanted to learn math way beyond what his school taught. He thought if he could just get really good at something, “something would turn up.” There was no internet to research, and no place to go to find out how to get help. He really didn’t have a plan, but he knew he didn’t want to give up. He wanted to get to college, and he thought “learning stuff” would be part of the way of getting there, and that was the only thing he had control over.

A book had recently been published, entitled, “Mathematics for the Million” by Lancelot Hogben. He took that book out of the library in the summer, and he worked through every single page in it by the end of the summer. He worked his ass off.

He didn’t just stay in his room and learn, though. He was an avid baseball player, and was out in the sandlot playing with his friends almost every day. He once told me that when he was a kid, he even saw Babe Ruth play in an exhibition game, somewhere in upstate New York.

Anyway, he studied so hard that he sort of “mesmerized” his family. His father had never seen anything like that. By the end of the summer, his father had come around, and had agreed that he’d allow his son to apply for scholarships. And he got one.

He ended up getting a degree in chemistry, and then a Ph.D. in physics. He became a friend of the physicist John Wheeler (who in turn was a friend of Einstein’s), and was about the most distinguished teachers at RPI and in the NY State University system.

I was lucky enough to have this man as a teacher when I went to college in the 70′s. He was the most brilliant man I’d ever met in my life. He recently passed away, and I miss him every day. His name was Kent Lawson, and he invented the discipline of Eduction (Edux), which I hope to be able to make available on the web soon.

The reason I’m telling you this is because, in effect, you are in a similar situation. But he was as bit older than you, so may not have come up with his Idea, yet.

That Idea was to decide what you want, and work towards it despite what the people and institutions around you do. You seem to want to pass into the next grade. What if summer school is not an option?

Trevor, that might be the best thing that could happen to you. More time in the same school that didn’t help you pass during the entire school year sounds like a waste of time to me. You know one of the definitions of crazy? It’s “doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result.”

So, if you really want to progress, go to a library . Sit there with a notebook and a pencil or pen, and brainstorm. Try to honestly figure out what your weak-points in 9th grade were. Be specific. Don’t just say, “Math” for example. Figure out what part of math. Was it geometry? Proofs? Algebra, word problems, etc?

Then try to trace the problem back to the place where you do understand. Let’s say you have problems dividing fractions. Do you know how to multiply them? Add them? Maybe not. But can you compare them, like knowing that 1/2 is larger than 2/5? If so, you know where to begin – you need to learn how to add fractions and work up from there.

If you don’t do this process with yourself, you may think, “Jeez, I need to know how to divide fractions – I just have to learn that.” Then you’ll start there, without the basis of addition and multiplication, and you’ll just be frustrated.

Go back as far as you need to and start there. Then HAMMER that subject. Find a decent book in the library about basic math and learn what you need to, and then find every textbook you can with examples of it and don’t stop until you’ve done at least 100 examples of each thing you need to know. If you can’t find examples of them in books, only then should you hit the internet and google “examples of dividing fractions,” for example.

Isn’t this more than they require? Of course it is! What was required didn’t help during the school year, did it? So get into the habit of doing more than they expect.

Trevor, after a few days of this, you will find that you like it. That’s the big surprise. It’s because you are doing something you want to do, for yourself, and there’s no idiot grading you.

If you do this, after a few days the librarian is going to notice, and he or she will help you with stuff. You will get a great reputation. Keep it up, and you may even deserve it!

Doing this will change your life for the better. I can’t tell you know in exactly which ways, but I hope you will write another comment by the end of the summer and tell us all just what this did for you. Let us know, too, if you try this, and keep us informed on your progress. If you need specific math help, let us know.

Once you have made your very specific list of things that you need to improve on, send it in, and if I have any resources to help you, I’ll pass them on to you.

All the best!

- Professor Homunculus

By the way, f u cn read ths, u no tht i don’t write in that style kiddie-internet style at all. Take a hint from the people you are looking to get help from, and try to match their style a bit. It may make them think that you take them seriously, and that may make them take you more seriously, OK?

’nuff said.

P.S. That book I mentioned, Mathematics for the Million, is still a great math book, and belongs in every home.