Fallible,

Hear! Hear! Your observations on math teachers are so right! I hated math in sixth grade--Mrs. Smith--yecch! We worked with division of fractions by fractions, and I didn't want to learn it because it made no sense to me why we were inverting the numerator and denominator--that seemed to me to be a huge mental operation--one like turning the world upside down. I refused to just memorize it. I bugged her to death to explain how it came to be--why we were doing so. She ignored me. I remember my dad saying, "Just do it!" And I balked. Seems silly now, but I couldn't make myself do something I couldn't understand. I refused to do homework--refused to take quizzes. Just sat on my tuffet and wouldn't do anything at all. Mrs. Smith threatened to hold me back a year because I wouldn't do the work in division of fractions. My dad was probably angrier at me at that point in my life more than at any other, but I was stalwart.

Can't remember much in seventh grade, but we moved to Fairfax County in Virginia in eighth grade where they were teaching the "new math." I took to it like a fish to water. What an awakening it was!

And everything in math was smooth, easy, and great fun till calculus. When I hit calculus, I zoned out and haven't looked back since.

I'd expect there are lots of horror stories from math students.

WW (which is "Worries" squared)