OK, the current teachers may be less psycho-rigid than those people, I don't know, I don't really hang out with them anymore and I'm no longer a teacher. So, while writing this text, I went through a few web pages to try to avoid saying anything stupid and to see what progress had been made.
I spot an engaging video made by an educational channel with a rather pleasant Swiss teacher who has a beautiful, working electronic board. The video is about linear equations with a single undefined variable, which seem to be the gateway, the basis in equations. I read this: “An equation is an equality in which at least one member is a literal expression”. Madeleine de Proust-style attack because it's almost word for word, the kind of stuff I heard in class. I hang on: so it's an equality, okay I understand that, ...of which at least one member..., and that's where the guesswork begins: is a member a number? An operation? The one on the left, the one on the right? Is the equal sign also a member of the “equality” club? Let's say that I suppose there is one member on each side of the equal sign, just as we have one arm on each side of the body, one leg on each side of the pelvis, one testicle... uh, I'll stop there. But here comes the final blow: ...is a literal expression! Okaaaayyyyyyyyyy!!!!
So today, it's easy: I'm no longer 11 or 12 years old, Google (or whatever) is my friend and tells me that it is an operation involving, among other things, letters and, what's more
THESE LETTERS REPRESENT NUMBERS WHICH ONE DO NOT KNOW THE VALUE!!!
But when I was 12, there was no internet, no Google, and only morons who stuck to:
« ...a equality of which atleastonenumba'saliteralexpresssion ».
Nobody to tell you it's a mixture of numbers, signs and letters. Come on, we're not going to talk about such trivial things. You see, mathematics is demanding, it's rigorous... A world in which we call a spade a spade. So the requirement, the rigor... is to learn by heart and repeat ad nauseam sentences that you don't understand, full of concepts that you haven't really grasped. Well done, guys! In hindsight, I am extremely impressed by the extent of the disaster and the depth of your stupidity. Why make things simple when you can make them complicated, right?
Can you imagine? At the time, I thought that if I didn't understand, it was probably because everyone had strong areas and weak areas, so I probably didn't have a mathematical mind. I thought I was dealing with complex things that were beyond my understanding, when in fact I was just dealing with dumbasses! Unable to put themselves in the other person's shoes, thinking that to bring the pupils up to the level of their discipline, the most important thing was not to bend down and lend a hand, but rather to let them fight their own way and move on with those who had managed to get on the boat, leaving the others to drown. So little would have been needed... what a waste...
