[Edu-sig] a non-rhetorical question

[Laura Creighton]

<resent -- left off the g in python.org>

There is a small fraction of students I get who cannot learn
algebra, ever, no matter what I or anybody else does.  I don't know
why that is.  But there is  a larger number which I could not
teach algebra until after I had taught them geometry.  So we fixed
things  by  requiring them to take geometry before algebra.  Now
you have got me wondering if the difference wasn't the geometry,
but simply that they were one year older, which has never occurred
to me before.  (So thank you.)

Do you have many students who are good at geometry and still rotten
at algebra?  Also what do they say when you ask them 'what don't
you understand here?'

thanks very much,
Laura