- Elizabeth Bjorkman, Lexington
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In response to Massachusetts’ college’s proposal to force college entrants who lack basic maths education to take ‘remedial’ maths classes, Elizabeth Bjorkman writes a letter to the editor. By employing a diplomatic and matter-of-fact tone and relying heavily on generalisations, Bjorkman contends to Massachusetts’ college and elementary schools that the college’s proposal has undermined the importance of improving elementary education, with its unnecessary promoting of college education.
Intending to ridicule state colleges like Massachusettes, Bjorkman opens her disapproval by presenting a caricature of maths lecturers in state colleges “frantically treating a flu...failing to think about…get[ing] people vaccinated.” Given the adverb ‘frantically,’ connotes ideas of uselessness and madness, Bjorkman seeks to persuade secondary schools of improving their elementary standards and not relying on the college’s “remedy,” is mindless and without careful thought of improving Maths abilities of collegians. Using words in the lexical field of medicine and health, such as “vaccinated” and “outbreak” allows Bjorkman to hyperbolise the college’s feelings about lacking maths skills as a serious, medical illness, impossible to find a cure for without promoting college education. Responding in her diplomatic tone to sound intelligent, Bjorkman presents Maths as a “language” that would be best learnt by students in the early ages – or in their sensitive period – as she aims to sound psychological – than when they get older as collegians. Despite elementary schools would more likely be inclined to argue that age difference between an elementary school student and a collegian would not be detrimental in learning Maths, Bjorkman uses her generalisation as humour to appeal to these secondary schools to take initiative to improve Maths teaching, as using humour would pacify the uproar created by Massachusettes college’s “frantic” and filled with fear proposal in forcing Maths classes to students.
Shifting to a matter-of-fact tone and fuelled by her generalisations carrying no evidence, Bjorkman attack’s secondary schools’ reputations as they “sadly” and “rarely” have not employed sophisticated strategies in improving “a good number sense” for students in their highly maturing stages of learning – “kindergarten through three.” Reading this, secondary school principals would immediately feel egoistic that Bjorkman is criticising them of their Maths teaching system, thus compelling these principals to enforce a stronger Maths teaching staff in schools so to protect their students from the mocked Maths “epidemic.” Aiming to warn and provoke fear amongst secondary schools of a lacking radical improvement in Maths teaching, Bjorkman’s generalisation of students “failing” algebra – the verb carrying connotations of imperfection and defect – would be likely to urge schools to act on their numeracy teaching, so to avoid their students tumbling their school’s reputation of excellence in academia.
Ironically finishing with a simple sentence – “math vaccination exits” – Bjorkman persuades with inclusivity in her rhetorical question to secondary schools to stay influential in supporting “our” students to be mathematically intelligent in the race of a meaningless “contin[ation] of remedial treatment” forced upon on them by colleges.