Chapter 7. Who’s to Blame?

“Hi, Mom,” said Andrew to Linda as she opened the front door of her house. Andrew didn’t look up from his homework, which was spread out on the table in the dining room.

“Why are you still up?” Linda asked, with hints of frustration and resignation. She took off her shoes and walked to the dining room. She had a sinking feeling that whatever was about to happen would end in tears.

“Because I’m bad at math,” Andrew said.

Linda sat down next to her son, noticing that he was now almost as tall as she. His eyes were red and his thick, black hair was standing up in all directions. “A hairstyle like an explosion at a macaroni factory,” they joked when his hair got this disheveled, but this was no time for joking. The table had tiny bits of rubber strewn about it, the result of furious, frustrated erasing that Andrew would do during his math homework.

From an early age, Andrew seemed exceptionally gifted at words and languages. He started speaking his first language, Bosnian, relatively late, but everyone marveled at the fully formed sentences that he spoke when he was four. He knew no English when he entered kindergarten, but within a few weeks was able to communicate with his teachers and classmates with ease.

Math was another story.

“Mom, I need help!” Andrew said.

Linda could almost predict what would happen next, because it had happened so many times before. She would try to explain whatever math concept her son was having trouble with, and he would try again and still get it wrong. “It’s so simple!” Linda would say, trying to remain calm. “Just follow the instructions!” Andrew would become exasperated and say, “It’s simple for you, Mom! I just don’t get it. I’m so bad at math!”

Linda wouldn’t say anything, but she agreed. Andrew was bad at math. Linda had excelled at math in her school days. She surprised her parents and teachers with just how good she was, and became a regular participant in math Olympiads, winning the one in Sarajevo in the ninth grade. Linda studied computer engineering in college, and eventually became a software developer. Because math came so easily to her—the same math that so easily drove her son to tears—she wondered if there was something wrong with Andrew. Was he lazy? Was he just not persistent enough? He was so easily frustrated, and made the same mistakes over and over again.

Linda thought about the conversation at the bar from earlier that night. Operator error. Yes, Mike made the error, and made the same error again. It was unfortunate, and it was also not about Mike. Mike was not being careless, and he certainly wasn’t lazy. If anything, Mike was sensible, thoughtful, methodical—a real engineer. He did what made sense to him at the time, and found out later that it was the wrong thing. He wasn’t trying to take the network down.

And Andrew wasn’t trying to fail at math. He didn’t want to keep making the same mistakes, and he too was just doing what made sense, which turned out to be the wrong thing. Was there something about the textbook, or the way that Andrew was taught at school, or even the way that Linda was teaching him? All these things compounded and conspired against him, resulting in her only son sobbing in frustration at half past 10 on a school night.

Linda put her arm around the boy, and drew him close to her. For the first time, she felt that “Andrew is just bad at math” was a deeply unsatisfactory explanation for what she was witnessing. It was much deeper, and much more complex.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered in Andrew’s ear. “I’m so, so sorry.” She held him close, as he cried. “You’re not bad at math. It’s not you. I can see how hard you’re working. I can only imagine how frustrating it feels.”