Word: algebraically
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Many a parent who confidently sits down at the parlor lamp to help his offspring tackle his homework finds that he has attempted more than he can handle. Published last week in Philadelphia was a convenient 236-page treatise, Algebra for Parents* calculated to save elders considerable embarrassment when asked to explain anything from simple addition to the binomial theorem. It was as ingratiating, discursive, and adroit as its author, a 59-year-old Philadelphia lawyer named Samuel Bryan Scott...
...extended his advice and counsel to his nephews, Edward and William McKendree Scott Jr. When they were very small, Lawyer Scott taught them to count the seven buttons on each of their shoes, told them the shoes together had 13 buttons, then waited to be rebutted. He started on algebra when Daughter Nor was 12, changing schools, and terrified of the subject. Father Scott took her out in a canoe and brushed her up so well that Nor graduated from Vassar without any further trouble with algebra, at 28 has just finished her interneship at the Philadelphia General Hospital...
Author Scott explains that he wrote Algebra for Parents because "ordinary school books are written to be used under a teacher. If a parent is moved to bone up on the subject, he is repelled by the usual textbook . . . seldom more than a skeleton of instruction and a mass of exercises." Although professional textbook writers may accuse Author Scott of oversimplification-trigonometry is covered in 17 pages-he tested his explanations by solving correctly all the College Board algebra examinations from 1916 to 1931. Says Lawyer Scott: "Teaching is a profession and everyone magnifies his own profession...
...train gentlemen's sons for the government service, 12-year-old Pushkin was sent there because it was free, spent six precocious years annoying his masters, writing light and scurrilous verse, getting into scrapes. He paid little attention to study. Once, when called on to solve an algebra equation, Pushkin guessed the answer was zero. Bellowed the master: "Fine! In my class, Pushkin, everything ends in zero with you. Take your seat and write verses." He graduated from the Lyceum without honors but with a rising reputation as a poet. Rejoining his family in St. Petersburg, Pushkin plunged into...
...which he already uses in Accounting--namely, to break up the class into compact sections of twenty to thirty members and allow his assistants to do the lecuring on a small scale. This would give that personal instruction which is so necessary to a subject resembling both geometry and algebra. In addition it would eliminate much of the time wasted in stagnant perplexity during the laboratory period. As for reforming the reading material, we can suggest nothing better than to hustle Professor Frickey over to the nearest publisher and Problems" enlarged to text-book dimensions. If he will retain their...