Chapter 14 — Math Anxiety
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arly in the week before Christmas vacation, Billy Edwards in Algebra class, slumped nearly horizontal and rubbed the back of his neck on the back of his chair in discouragement, confusion, and boredom. Mr. Marvin, young, tall, energetic, and bearded, was starting all over again to explain positive and negative numbers. Billy didn’t care. His homework had been all wrong, and he had seen all he wanted to see of Mr. Marvin’s horrible number line. “Edwards, get off the back of your neck and sit on that part of your anatomy which the Almighty cushioned for the purpose, and tell me what 4 + 1 is.” Billy returned to consciousness and heaved himself wretchedly erect to the snickers of his colleagues, saw the figures written on the board, saw Mr. Marvin standing expectantly with his chalk on the fourth mark to the right of 0, heard the question echoing in his head, and answered “5.” “Keerect!” shouted Mr. Marvin. “Now what is 4 + 0?” He wrote that below the first figures. “4,” said Billy. He was really with it now. “What about 4 + (-1)?” asked Mr. Marvin. Billy froze. He didn’t even ask himself what the parentheses meant, how you could have + and - at the same time? He just froze. He saw the numbers on the board with his eyes, he heard the question with his ears, but a shutter came down over his brain and the question bounced off. “I don’t know.” Someone snickered. Hands waved in the air. “Come now, Billy. If 4 + 1 = 5 and 4 + 0 = 4, what does 4 + (-1) equal?” Hands waved, fingers snapped, Mr. Marvin waited. Panic mounted, the impenetrable shutter was down tight. Billy reached for some answer, any answer, and said “0.” The class laughed out loud, some because they were so glad it was Billy and not they; others because they knew the answer. “Phillips.” “3.” “Right. Now if 4 + (-1) = 3 what does x + (-y) equal?” He wrote it on the board. “x - y,” responded Phillips. “Right. Now do you see that, Billy? The rule for addition is if the signs are different…” But Billy didn’t see. The rule hammered against the shutter 1ike hail on the windowpane. Mr. Marvin pressed on, presenting the concept logically, questioning those who had failed on the homework, covering the board with letters and numbers, parentheses, + and - and = signs and counting off spaces on his number line. It was a brilliant piece of exposition, but Henry Phillips and Jonesy, who understood it anyway, soon got tired of it; others, whose minds were shuttered like Billy’s, were scarcely conscious of it, and a few who had been on the verge of comprehension, comprehended. Henderson, like Paul on the road to Damascus, burst out “You mean, sir, that if the signs are the same you add and if they are different you subtract.” “Glory be!” ejaculated Marvin. “You got it – almost. If you start with a positive number, that works.” But Billy was down on the back of his neck again and only came to when the bell rang. The shutter came up, he sprang for the door with the rest, and Algebra was over the dam for today. There was a math test on Thursday, through which Billy sat, grabbing at any answers that floated by on his stream of consciousness, convinced that there were no correct answers, that if there were, he would 64
