On Mon, 20 May 2013 21:25:28 -0700, Bob Penoyer
wrote:
snip
Your vaunted teachers have failed us. Jim Thompson's examples of how
his granddaughter was given a problem for which she was not equipped,
and the teacher jumping into simultaneous equations with no prior
preparation in single-variable algebra are only two examples. The
examples of misguided teachers and teaching methods are endless.

Exactly! It was on the 'approved' syllabus, so that is how it MUST be
taught! Since the teacher doesn' really know what it means, anyway,
it must be right!

Or, she could be the opposite problem, the teacher is a wiz at math,
who just 'does' it, and never really thought about the process
involved. I had one teacher in grad school like that. For him, it
was just obvious and he couldn't understand that his explanation made
absolutely non sense!

Charlie