I always try to be very supportive of my daughters’ teachers, because I know teaching is one of the most demanding jobs possible and teachers are almost always wonderful and caring people. One evening, however, I decided I needed to intervene. My youngest daughter, around nine at the time, had come home with a worksheet of forty questions. She sat in front of the worksheet looking deflated. I was immediately concerned that this sort of worksheet would turn my daughter against math, so I asked her to work on only the first five questions. Then I wrote a note to the teacher on the worksheet that
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