The Huffington Post – Karen Zainal
“At the beginning of the academic year, I noticed a few high school freshmen getting confused between simplifying algebraic expressions and solving algebraic equations. It took just 15 minutes to get to the root of the problem: they don’t understand the concept of the equal sign. You know, our ubiquitous and seemingly benign friend: “=”. And then I saw the same problem in some sophomores, and then even a junior. My first instinct was to wonder if perhaps they had a learning disability of some sort that’s hindered them from grasping basic mathematical concepts all these years. But then I see that they read just fine, write just fine, count just fine… so what’s going on here?.”(more)