Today's rant.

No other terms than unconditional & immediate surrender. Ulysses S. Grant.

At what point do you admit defeat? How much is too much & where is the line between need & insanity? When is enough enough?

It has taken 12 months but Dearest has finally pulled the plug on me. He has watched the tears, the tantrums, the sheer frustration of dragging a child against her will where she has no intention of going & boy do I know what's going on in her little red head because she is me some thirty odd years ago! Enough. My problem, so Dearest tells me, is that I don't like to be defeated by anything. He could be right...hm.

Ring the umbrella school, Dearest tells me...me, not him, & do something about this. It took a week. I am so non~confrontational even when I know I'm right. I got over debating in High School. I don't like rocking boats & I needed some measure of mental stamina ~ hard given my mind is rather taken up with other things just now.

Eventually I managed an e~mail & explained that Ditz has completely plateaued out. Math is going absolutely nowhere except maybe backwards. She is not learning. She is not retaining information. She is actively engaged in sabotaging her math. Every lesson we had to backtrack, go over & over the process & for what? Ditz is not going to use this math. Trust me on this one. I've never used it in my life either.

I want, I explained, a Math for Dummies curriculum. Basic math. Everyday math. Math Ditz will, & does, use in real life. The child does not need to learn how much fuel to put in her Lear jet. That's what the pilot is for. She should probably be able to work out if she has enough money for fuel to get her car from A to B. Then again her mother doesn't. Intuition is a wonderful thing & rarely fails me ~ or at least fails me far less often than my math does.

I've heard all the arguments, ad infinitum, about what good training for the brain math is ~ but that's assuming you are actually using your brain & I can assure you Ditz is not. I have heard how it helps you think outside the box. If Ditz thought any further outside the box she'd be airborne. Logic? Strategy? Math hasn't helped so far so I don't see that one changing any time soon.

This is the sort of thing that has the anti~homeschoolers howling after homeschooler's blood. So shoot me. I went to public school. I also went to a very elite private girls' school. My math is barely to a third grade level & Ditz's is much, much better than that ~ & guess who taught her?!

The unpalatable truth is you cannot teach someone who refuses to learn. I mean, I loved math class. I got in so much extra reading because so long as I was quiet & non~disruptive no~one cared that I never actually did any math. I distinctly remember the last math exam I ever sat. There were 25 questions to make a percentage out of 125. I got 25% because I *attempted* each question. In other words I wrote something but I didn't do a single sum or get a single sum right. I didn't care then & care even less now. Frankly I'm surprised we got this far before hitting the wall but now we have hit the wall.

So I'm a mathematical moron! Then how come I can stand in the checkout handing money back to the public schooled cashier because she has given me too much change & she really should double check? I've lost count of the number of times this has happened. These kids must be costing their employers a fortune!

I don't know how Ditz does math. I never have. It's visual, concrete & mental. I don't think she knows either but give the child a sheet of music & she knows how the fractions work. Give her a recipe & she can double or triple it without thinking twice. She has worked out [without the calculator] how long it will take her to save an air fare to England on her current pocket money [not any time soon!]. She understands, far better than I do, how math actually works but she has absolutely no interest in it for interest's sake. It only becomes interesting if there is a dollar sign in front of the number & she's got it in cold hard cash but if she needs it she knows how to work her math out.

I don't recall the child ever expressing a desire to be an engineer or an architect or a quantum physicist. She really doesn't need algebra or geometry to toot a flute or sing like a canary ~ whether she participates or teaches music. What she does need is to know how to balance her cheque book, how to asses her bank statement, enter into a financial contract without getting ripped off, work out a budget & live within her means ~ something far too many people don't have a clue about.

Why on earth do we fill our kid's heads with abstract math & leave them to founder in a financial morass as adults, in debt up to their eyeballs & mortgaged to the hilt. I can't remember the figures for our personal national debt [how much everyone owes on their credit cards, debit cards & loans] but it's in the millions, probably billions. Does that not strike anyone but me as just a little insane?

Oh, so, there is no Math for Dummies curriculum ~ & no, I'm not writing one! The school is doing something up for us. Heaven alone knows what. Will Ditz be happy? Probably not. Will she be able to do it? Probably. Another year & we can ditch the stuff completely & we will be perfectly o.k with that because bottom line: Ditz has tried her best but the reality is God did not make her with a higher math gene & we will all be better off & happier if we just accept that fact & move on. Moving right along here...