Algebra and C.S. Lewis

We recently received our son's first progress report from his Pre-Algebra class at Cheney High School and I am very pleased.  If he continues this way he will get an A in the class.  I never got an A in math anywhere, high school or college.  In fact, math has always given me a lot of anxiety.  I know I should just get on with my life, but so much of life is associated with math skills. I went for a job interview today and thank God they did not give me a math quiz.  I was always fascinated by my math teachers.  They were like wizards who could do magic before my eyes and I never learned their secrets.  I decided early in my educational pursuits that it was the Arts for me.  History, Literature, Language - that's where I belong.  I read a great biography entitled Jack:  C.S. Lewis and His Times by George Sayer, and I learned that Lewis also had found himself in difficulty when it came to maths.*  In the English system, university students who take up languages and literature do not have to take any papers in mathematics, but to get into oxford Lewis did have to sit an entrance exam which had a section on maths.  He failed the maths portion of the exam.  Luckily for Lewis the government had passed a law allowing veterans of the Great War to wave one area of the exam and so C.S. "Jack" Lewis was admitted. Lucky for us, too; for if he had been turned away from Oxford, we might never have had the joy of reading the Chronicles of Narnia and so many of his other great works.  Now, I'm no Lewis, but I can at least take heart in knowing that the low scores I earned in my math classes should not keep me from enjoying a happy and productive life.

* The American abbreviation for mathematics is math while the English use maths.  I lived in New Zealand for nine years and got used to hearing people say maths, but I found it to be a very difficult word to say..