Math Doesn’t Suck: How to Survive Middle School Math Without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail

Full Description

5 Reviews

1. I use “Math Doesn’t Suck” and “Kiss My Math” to teach math to women who are incarcerated at the Federal Prison Camp (FPC) north of Phoenix. My students range in age from 18 years to the mid-sixties. All of the women in my classes have already acquired either a high school diploma or a GED degree. Unfortunately, many of them have forgotten much of the math that they once knew; so they need a “math refresher course.”

   Many FPC inmates want to improve their math skills, because, while they are incarcerated at FPC, they have the opportunity to participate in The College Program, which was initiated about 13 years ago by Professor Peg Bortner of Arizona State University. The College Program offers college level courses in cooperation with Rio Salado College [a Maricopa County, Arizona, community college] in a “distance learning” format. The students acquire college credits from Rio, which they may transfer to almost any other community college or to a university after their release from FPC. A woman whose sentence keeps her at FPC long enough may even earn one or more associate degrees.

   Rio requires every incoming student to sit for a series of proficiency examinations, one of which is a math exam. The other exams are not serious obstacles for most of our students, but the math exam is another story. Many of our students do not achieve on their first attempt a score that is sufficiently high to permit them to register for a college level math course. The intent of our “math refresher course,” which uses “Math Doesn’t Suck” and “Kiss My Math” as the textbooks for the course, is to get them over that hurdle.

   There is no charge for the course. We provide our students with all of the supplies they need and lend them the books that Changing Hands Bookstore, an independent local bookstore in Tempe, kindly sells to us at a reduced price.

   Our students greatly appreciate both “Math Doesn’t Suck” and “Kiss My Math,” which are much more than just math books: they are also great confidence builders. For many of our students, these are perhaps the only math books they have ever truly liked. Consequently, we let each student who completes the course choose one of the books to keep as her own. We wish that we could let them keep both, but our limited resources do not permit us to do so.

2. There are so many people who need help with math but Math Doesn’t Suck is geared toward only one group, girls – or more specifically, girly-girls of a certain age. The target of this book is for girls age 12-16 who are ‘into’ jewelry, make-up and dating.

   So what about boys, how can it help them? And what about girls who aren’t into make-up, jewelry and and don’t want to date until they are more mature? Or were raised with a different set of values than the book’s intention? They wouldn’t be able to relate and/or benefit from the author’s examples.

   My daughter is too old for it, but she wouldn’t have fit in the audience box anyway. And my 11 year old son, who needs it right now won’t be able to relate to it. I could give it less than 3 stars for those reasons alone but it’s not a bad book per say, well maybe except for the title (we don’t use the word “suck” in that way, although that didn’t stop me from reading it), it’s just not for everyone but I think the author did a great job for the group of readers who she wanted to target.

   Aside from the fact that it’s a helpful book, but based on all the other reviews you could have guessed that already. So, it gets 3 stars from me, because it’s not a bad book, it’s just leaving out a whole lot of people who could be helped with math.

3. This book is presented in such a way that teenage girls can relate to math–especially if they are apprehensive with math to begin with. I can see this as being a great tool for the next couple of school years or so for my soon to be teenager.

4. We were very excited to hear about this and its companion book (Kiss My Math) for our middle school girls, the older of whom had some grade problems with her pre algebra class towards the end of the recent school year, and her year-younger sister who had had a very successful year, including math.

   Each strongly disliked both books.

   The rising eighth grader said they were more interesting to read and easier to understand than her text book, but did not find it very helpful.

   The rising seventh grader says they were “somewhat condescending, tried too hard to be appealing” by referencing pop icons who she cares nothing about and “who will be out of vogue in a couple years”. Also, that the books talk too much about irrelevant things (to her) such as careers and self esteem. She thought the “whole female empowerment thing” was . . . sort of dated.

   Looking throgh the books as parents, and in context of our girls’ comments, it seemed to us the whole pop culture thing appeared very forced, awkward, and ultimately distracting.

   Our feeling is disappointment. We really looke forward to an engaging book which would support one possibly struggling child and stimulate/enrich another who relishes academic challenge. Neither was obtained.

5. I bought this for my 12 yr old grandson based on an interview with the author.
   He said that it made math more fun and understandable.