WHAT ARE SOME OF THE MYTHS SURROUNDING JOHN SAXON’S MATH BOOKS?
(Myth 5)
Advanced Mathematics Can Easily be Taken in a Single School Year.
Several decades ago, while teaching John’s Advanced Mathematics textbook my second year at the high school, I encountered a problem with my Saxon Advanced Mathematics students. The students who had received an A or B in the Saxon Algebra 2 course the previous year were now struggling with low B and C grades – and we were only in our first nine weeks of the course.
I called John and explained the situation to him. He asked me if I was following the same procedure I had used in the Algebra 2 course last year (e.g. a lesson a day – all thirty problems assigned every day – and a test every Friday). I told him that we did all thirty problems every day and took a test every Friday just as we had in the Algebra 1 course as well. I went on to tell John that the students were frustrated. In Algebra 2, they had easily completed their daily work done in forty-five to fifty minutes, but now they were spending several hours each night to complete their daily assignments – and most of them were not even getting all of the assigned homework finished in that period of time.
John’s response was quick and to the point. He asked me if I had read the preface to his book, and when I told him I had not, he told me to read the preface of the book and then he hung up. This was not an unusual trait of John’s. I had known him for several decades and, like many other experienced fighter pilots I had encountered in my military service, he seldom went into any lengthy explanation when someone was not following instructions.
In the preface of the Advanced Mathematics textbook, I found that John had written in detail about the textbook’s in-depth coverage of trigonometry, logarithms, analytic geometry, and upper-level algebraic concepts. He explained that the textbook could easily be broken into two 5-semester hour courses at the college level. But he cautioned – that at the high school level – teachers should break the course into three or four semesters.
I immediately chose the four semester option, calculating that this would allow two days for each lesson. The students could do the odd numbered problems one day and the even numbered problems the second day. By doing it this way, the students would encounter all of the concepts covered in the thirty problems both days since the concepts taught in each lesson were arranged in pairs. Also, they would not have to spend more than an hour each night on their daily assignment.
Is it possible for high school students to successfully complete the entire Advanced Mathematics textbook in a single school year? Yes, but both John and I were in agreement that those students are the exception rather than the rule. In all the years that I taught using John’s math books, I have encountered only one student who completed the entire 125 lessons of the Advanced Mathematics textbook in a single year – with a test average of over 90 percent! She was a National Merit Scholar and her father taught mathematics with me at the local university.
That is not to say that others could not have accomplished the same feat, but these exceptions only tend to justify the rule. The beauty of John’s Advanced Mathematics book is its flexibility that allows students to use the book at a pace comfortable to them whether that pace takes two, three or four semesters. There is no academic dishonor in a bright home school math student taking three or four semesters to complete John Saxon’s Advanced Mathematics textbook if that student needs the extra study time to take care of other tough academic subjects being taken at the same time. There is no need to bunch everything up and rush through the math just to get to calculus before the student graduates from high school.
Students fail calculus in college not because of the difficulty of the calculus concepts, but because their background in algebra and trigonometry is weak. It is the student with the weak mastery of algebra and trigonometry in high school who fails the calculus course – or – perhaps the student who has mastered the algebra and trigonometry in high school, but because of this knowledge, elects not to attend the daily calculus lectures.
Please Click Here to watch a short video that describes how the Advanced Mathematics course is taught and credited.
The sixth and last myth to be discussed in next month’s news article is:
Oct – Myth 6 -You Do Not Have to Finish the Last Twenty or So Lessons in any Saxon Math Book