Too Old for Alligator Math

Some teacher somewhere just rocked my whole world today, and has absolutely no idea.  My daughter came home with a page of math homework that she needed help with.  You’re probably already thinking that you know where this is going, but it’s not a curriculum issue with “Common Core”.  It’s not the dreaded long division, or the “new math” methods make us morph into Mr. Incredible - “Math is MATH!”  Nope. 


So there I am washing up a few dishes when she walks in with a paper in her hand.  She sits down at the kitchen table with a page of the “Greater Than, Less Than and Equal To” problems to solve.  You know the kind; there are two numbers - or something to that effect - with a little blank circle in the middle.  Hers looked kinda like: 


4(6-3)         (3+2)5

(only I can't get the circle in the right place so I guess you'll just have to imagine it...)


She had to analyze the two sides, and then place the correct sign in the middle circle according to what their solved versions would be - after simplifying them and determining which value was greater.  No biggie.  


Her question actually had to do with the distributive property of multiplication if I remember correctly, but either way, it was a simple fix and we worked it right out in about a second.  I told her that her ‘alligator would eat the bigger one on the right’.  


This child looked me dead in the eye and said, 


“My teacher says we're ‘too old’ to be calling them alligators anymore and we have to use the correct terms for the symbols.  This one is a ‘less than’ symbol.”  


😳


She writes it in, and scampers off… meanwhile my brain is experiencing a mushroom-cloud-level explosion event; mental nuclear meltdown.  


💥


“TOO OLD?!”  That’s not a thing in math!  She’s only eight!  What does that make ME?  I still use that memory analogy!  You can’t be TOO OLD to use memory phrases, right?


Right?!


I covered the entire grief cycle in the time it took me to finish drying the mug I was holding.  


She’s in third grade, for crying out loud!  That is NOT “too old” to be remembering math with alligators!  ….  Is it?


And when did there start to be an AGE in which those little memory helps were not acceptable!?  When *I* learned those things I was under the impression that it was lasting information!  So much so that I applied it to other areas of my life, as though it were an actual SKILL!  Skills don’t have expiration dates!  Who decided that this application needed to be replaced at some undefined juncture?  Does this mean that “righty-tight-y and lefty loose-y” are on the chopping block as well?   What about “Thirty days hath September” and “Never Eat Soggy Waffles?!”  If anybody tries taking ROY G. BIV from me I will CUT YOU!  Where do we draw the line?!  Stop the insanity!!!


Deep breath.  Put down the knife, there's no one chasing Roy around the kitchen.


It’s going to be okay.  I mean, it’s good that they’re learning the terms, that’s important too…  But I can still use alligators - in my own head - and just not tell anyone, right?  


By this point I was basically Gollum, but as a middle-aged female human, crouching behind the kitchen island clutching a dish towel and protectively stroking my favorite memory rhymes, “It’s okay, my precioussssss, nobody will take you from meeeeee.” 


That’s right.  I can do whatever I want in my head.  That’s one of the benefits of adulting… 


I reached up to switch on the garbage disposal and my hand hesitated for a moment in front of two switches.  Oh yeah, “L-ight on the L-eft”.  

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