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USELESS HIGHER MATH

15 Years Later, Ms. King’s Algebra Class Still Has Never Needed To Have Learned Polynomials

Dash MacIntyre
3 min readMar 16, 2023
Photo by LinkedIn Sales Solutions on Unsplash

An annual study of Ms. King’s former 8th grade algebra class from 2008 has confirmed once again that not a single one of her students has ever actually needed to know how to solve polynomial math problems.

“You’ll never know when you might need to know this,” was Ms. King’s favorite phrase to pacify the apathetic math students. She would then point to a poster tacked on the classroom wall picturing a mansion on the beach with a giant garage filled with five sports cars. Beneath the mansion was the phrase “Motivation for higher math.”

But it appears that the entire class has literally never needed to know how to solve polynomial equations at any point in their lives since middle school.

“It’s bullshit,” said former student Sophia Turner. “I knew she was lying. I knew from the day I brought my homework home and no one in my family knew how to help me with it. Not my mom, not my dad, not any of my aunts or uncles, none of my older cousins. My grandpa told me to tell Ms. King to ‘F off’ because he didn’t need to know how to solve polynomials when he was shooting Nazis in northern France. My uncle then chimed in that the Viet Cong sneaking around in the jungle had no clue about…

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Dash MacIntyre
Dash MacIntyre

Written by Dash MacIntyre

Comedian, political satirist, and poet. Created The Halfway Post. Check out my comedy book Satire In The Trump Years, and my poetry book Cabaret No Stare.

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