In elementary school I won a mathematics award. It was around second or third grade and it was for being math student of the year, or something along those lines.
This would be the highlight of my mathematic career.
In eighth grade I wasn’t allowed to attend algebra at the high school. Instead, I was in a math class with three other boys and about fifteen girls who also didn’t make the cut. The four boys sat on the side of the room looking at everyone else. This was a prime set up to “grade each other’s papers.” I aced all of those quizzes.
Each week there was a puzzle to solve written on the “Zoomer” board at the back of the room. These puzzles were what janitor Matt Damon solved in Good Will Hunting. Solving the weekly puzzle awarded extra credit. Sometimes I solved the puzzles while other times it was more of a group effort.
Our teacher loved math. She loved it so much that she abhorred any defamation of the subject. She came to us with a full page advertisement for Kudos bars that showed a confused student starring at an exaggerated math problem. The caption said something like, “Confused? Eat Kudos.” and pictured the chocolate-covered granola bars. This just couldn’t stand.
As a class we wrote letters to Kudos explaining that math, in fact, is vital to our society. Trivializing…
