A long time ago, in Algebra II — the same year that 9/11 happened — I curiously asked my teacher a question without any hint of malice:
“Why don’t you teach everything in the book? Why only bits and pieces?”
What I was wondering was why we didn’t go through the entire book sequentially.
The answer I was hoping to get but didn’t understand at the time was that teachers design lesson plans that don’t include entire books. In fact, a few years later, in college, I’d find that teachers also design lesson plans that don’t include the book they required you to buy at all.
The answer I actually got was:
“Don’t question the way I teach.”
