Comments

I used to have a text by Cynthia Arem that I lent out to students. Until one left with it, never to return.

-- RudbeckiaHirta - 23 Nov 2005

Is it good?

I saw her name on the list.

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Nov 2005

It's pretty good -- I think it's better than anything from Sheila Tobias. (Admittedly, I am anti-Sheila Tobias because her written tone rubs me the wrong way. And she is opposed to long division.)

What's good about it is that it has a lot of practical suggestions. Along the lines of "Have you tried X? No? Well, try it! Even if you think it's dumb and won't work, give it a try because you won't be any worse off!" For students who a paralyzed with fear and/or stuck in a rut, then there is great value in just getting them to try SOMETHING, ANYTHING. It fits in well with my lowest-level course where most of the objectives at the beginning are behavioral rather than mathematical.

-- RudbeckiaHirta - 23 Nov 2005

As the resident math phobe I can tell you why math anxiety happens:

Fear of appearing stupid

Fear of being stupid

Fear that the stupid person next to you doing math quicker is actually smarter than you

Confusion as to how you got that way and why others who don't seem any smarter are more capable at it

Massive fear of fractions, percentages and decimals

Fear of other's expressions when you can't remember basic computation

Massive fear of the teacher's expression if you ask a question about a math problem (This only needs to happen once, but you check with most math phobes it probably happened a lot more

Angst during the entire hour of math class that you are going to be called to the board and made a fool of thereby preventing you from learning anything that day about math

Angst that if you are called to the board you won't be able to strategically position yourself directly behind the teacher who has his book opened to the answers in the back so that you may directly copy them on the board (Hey, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.)

And on and on. There's a lot more where that came from, but I think I covered most of the biggies.

-- SusanS - 23 Nov 2005

The biggest fear of most people is public speaking. Somehow I suspect it's not a good idea to combine public speaking with math for people who are afraid of both.

(I'd never thought of this before, but after Susan's comment I begin to wonder why.)

-- DougSundseth - 24 Nov 2005

I have a sister-in-law who is math phobic. She doesn't talk about it much, so it's hard to trace. In my days of teaching college math, I saw some that definitely got anxious.

My guess is that it is based on not having a good foundation in math; there are gaps in knowledge and skills. It's almost like not being able to read, although with reading, it's clearly defined and recognizable. With math, the gaps can come anywhere along the line, but the result is a person that doesn't quite know what is going on and is feeling very uncomfortable. In my classes, these were the students who wanted to do all problems by pattern recognition; they could do the problem only if it was (almost) exactly like another one they had seen. This is a common survival tactic. Unfortunately, many will come to feel that there is something wrong with them; that they are just not good in math.

Perhaps a student did very well in the early grades and could multiply and divide with the best. Then, maybe he/she got a clunker of a teacher and wound up never really understanding fractions. When I taught college algebra, it was hard to figure out the underlying reason why a student was having a problem. I would have to sit with them one-on-one and ask lots of questions.

Once you fail to master one area of math, it affects everything else. For writing, you may have trouble with run-on sentences or saying exactly what you want, but it's still writing. For math, it's just wrong. Kind of like not knowing how to even begin writing a sentence.

A lot of this would be cleared up with quality K-8 math curricula that focus on mastery of basic skills and do not let the student progress until mastery is achieved. A student might not like math, but at least they won't be anxious about it. They will just say that they hate math. I can do algebra, but I hate it. That is properly-based opinion. That's a good thing.

-- SteveH - 24 Nov 2005

....What Steve said.

If I could impart any wisdom to any of you who teaches or tutors a kid (or adult) with what you suspect to be math anxiety, the greatest gift you could give that person is to remain easygoing calm while identifying the gap "Hey, you seem to be a little confused about...." Followed by, "That's a really common problem." And later, "We'll just go back and get those skills and you'll be fine."

This is what my girlfriend said to me in college (She majored in Education). I remember thinking that it couldn't be that easy, this had plagued me all of my school career. But it worked and I made my first A's in math class since grade school.

One of the key components of the "baggage" of math anxiety is the fear that something is wrong with you (maybe a learning disability) and that no one can help you. Once the tension of all that dissapates you can finally focus on the math. I remember actually being able to understand the teacher for the first time in years when he went off on a tangent. It was an excellent life lesson for me.

-- SusanS - 24 Nov 2005

Susan

Can I pull this up front?

Or would that be too embarrassing?

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Nov 2005

I have a friend who has profound math anxiety, to the point of math phobia.

I can see her tense up if I just show her a page of elementary school math.

The bad thing is that her son is both borderline special needs AND talented at math......and she's just not in a position to work with him.

I think she may get started on KUMON. She told me on Halloween she's interested, and I've got a KUMON folder for her.

I suspect that if she took her kids there, that would be all they need to survive & profit from our school's curriculum.

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Nov 2005

My mom has the 'skills gap' story.

She was very ill with pneumonia in....3rd grade?

Not sure.

There were no antibiotics then, and she almost died. I think she may have been out of school for 6 months, and no work was sent home. The teacher told her mom not to worry; she would catch up.

She has strong math anxiety, and thinks there's something wrong with her brain.

Then, when I started working on math, IIRC, she actually suggested to me that I might have a math disability! (She probably doesn't remember saying this.)

The funny thing is, one of her neighbors until recently was a math professor at Northwestern.

He told her, flat-out, there's nothing wrong with your brain. They just didn't teach you right.

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Nov 2005

My friend with the math phobia also has a funky educational history where, at some point, she was put in a French lysee here in the U.S. They were way ahead in math, and I don't know what, if anything, was done to catch her up.

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Nov 2005

Perhaps a student did very well in the early grades and could multiply and divide with the best. Then, maybe he/she got a clunker of a teacher and wound up never really understanding fractions.

That's what happened to Christopher, exactly.

Bad fourth grade teacher; didn't learn fractions.

So this week he missed his first day of school, and what did they do that day?

They took the fraction pre-test.

When he went back yesterday the teacher told him he didn't need to take it.

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Nov 2005

I just sent her an email asking if she could send the test home...

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Nov 2005

Speaking from inside the RAPTURE, I wonder if sending college kids to KUMON would work.

The whole point of KUMON—one of the points, anyway—is to create 'self-learners'....the slogan is 'Learning how to learn' or something like that.

It's classic behaviorism.

The student is given problems at his or her exact level, and gets so many right that he builds confidence.

There's also a principle of variable reinforcement at work. You get most of the problems right, but you get some wrong, and the schedule is unpredictable.

Some people have spoken of getting 'addicted' to KUMON, and I think KUMON himself may have used the term.

So think about taking a math phobic person and putting him or her in a situation where he just keeps on getting problems right....but NOT ALWAYS. Almost always.

You'd be using the principles of behaviorism to create a 'counter-addiction' or perhaps a counter-phobia.

(What is a counter-phobia?? I've heard the term counter-phobic, but don't know what it is.)

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Nov 2005

I think that with college students that the trickiest part would be to get them started with the right attitude.

As a companion to our freshman-level courses we have self-paced, worksheet based supplements (graded by computer because of the hundreds and hundreds of students involved). One of our biggest problems is with the buy-in: the most frequest negative comment is that the skills in the practice sessions are from earlier courses (such as basic algebra, the sort of stuff that Christopher is struggling with with th edistributive law, etc.) and not more practice on the exact same material taught in the regular course.

We have a widely mixed set of problems to contend with. While some of our students have math anxiety, some of them have too much math self-esteem. Some of our low-level students have gotten straight As in hgih school math, even in courses with names like "advanced math" and sometiems even courses called "calculus." These students (and they are a very sizeable minority) are extremely frustrated by not only being put into a low-level course but also failing it.

And then there are the students from hard situations. Many have had enormous family responsibilities growing up (raising younger siblings, etc) that limited the amount of time/effort that could be devoted to school work. Now they have gaps in their backgrounds AND still have their responsibilties AND are now also working full time.

There are probably almost as many stories as there are students. That's what makes it so hard to be successful with these classes (especially when we often teach them in large classes). And we only have 2100 minutes of classroom time with them (2000 when yoou subtract out the absenses the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and the wednesday before fall break.)

-- RudbeckiaHirta - 24 Nov 2005

Susan and Steve,

I'd really like it if Catherine and I could get your contributions to this thread up front.

I taught kids in college who had a lot of anxiety around math... a lot of Baggage, as RH put it. It was pretty clear that they needed me to be calm and methodical, but I never really understood it, or the roots of it, and deep down I wasn't really very sympathetic.

I think Steve's take on it is right (and I've heard similar things from Bernie); it comes from not having the basics down, and never feeling that you're standing on firm ground with fundamental operations like fractions.

My thought about math anxiety is this (tell me if you think I'm right): you either can't remediate it at all (which is not something I want to believe), or you remediate it by giving the person repeated experiences of success in their encounters with math. Which, in all probability, a semester-long crash course in "college algebra" is not going to provide.

-- CarolynJohnston - 24 Nov 2005

RH

As a companion to our freshman-level courses we have self-paced, worksheet based supplements (graded by computer because of the hundreds and hundreds of students involved)

How do these work?

And......what are you seeing that's more successful, less successful, in-between-successful.....??

I hadn't given this realm any thought at all (it's always worse than you think).

I'm here in middle school trying to prevent Christopher becoming one of these kids, and I simply hadn't thought about what you do on the ground when confronted with them. (Carolyn and I have talked about her days teaching remedial college courses, but more in terms of what Christopher & Ben need now.)

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Nov 2005

you remediate it by giving the person repeated experiences of success in their encounters with math. Which, in all probability, a semester-long crash course in "college algebra" is not going to provide

This would certainly be my guess.

ALTHOUGH fear never, ever goes away. It can't be unlearned.

All you can do with fear—although this is important and productive—is inhibit it. (True for all creatures, not just humans. The difference being that it's much harder to teach a dog or a cat to inhibit fear.)

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Nov 2005

You know, this sparks a thought.

For awhile now, when people hear my weird mid-life Math Story, they'll say things like, "Did you always like math?" Or, "Were you good at math in high school?"

I don't exactly have an answer to those particular questions, and I always find myself saying, "I was never afraid of math."

After awhile I'd heard myself say that so often that I began to wonder why those particular words always came out of my mouth.

Now, reading these comments, and starting to think about this subject a little bit, I think my cognitive unconscious was zeroing in on one of the most important obstacles to math learning past the age of 5 or 6.

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Nov 2005

I am afraid of calculus, however!

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Nov 2005

Also, ever since Kathy Iggy left her comment about....linear algbra?.....I've been afraid of that, too.

Of course, seeing as how I no longer remember the subject area she mentioned, I'm not exactly shaking in my boots.

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Nov 2005

And she is opposed to long division.

oh come on

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Nov 2005

I am opposed to being opposed to long division

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Nov 2005

I'm just going to have to rely on my Can't Say No To A Challenge personality.

The very fact that calculus scares me is the exact reason I will have to learn it.

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Nov 2005

Calculus is not that bad if you have a good algebra background, you have enough time to learn it at your own pace, and you have a good reason for learning it.

-- RudbeckiaHirta - 24 Nov 2005

The problem with fixing math problems in college is that most colleges aren't set up for that and most students aren't interested. They have chosen their academic path and the algebra course is in the way. They just want to get past it. It's hard to convince college students otherwise. Many of the students in my college algebra class were future nurses and teachers. Outside of plenty of office hours, the course was not structured for diagnosing and solving math problems, and students won't come to office hours unless they are close to failing. Perhaps there are some college remedial courses now that focus on solving these issues, but I think that most of these students are interested only in getting through the course one way or another. It is easy to see why many of these future K-8 teachers are open to teaching math differently.

"My thought about math anxiety is this (tell me if you think I'm right): you either can't remediate it at all (which is not something I want to believe), or you remediate it by giving the person repeated experiences of success in their encounters with math. Which, in all probability, a semester-long crash course in "college algebra" is not going to provide."

The longer it goes on, the harder it is. Their reaction might be that they just want to get through the course (many of my students did, barely), not to prepare for a different field of study. Many students (we used to talk about this in our math department meetings) chose their major based on how much math they didn't have to do. At least it was the other department (like Nursing) that decided on the highest level of math they had to take (Trig, if I recall correctly). I wanted to stay out of that battle.

-- SteveH - 25 Nov 2005

Carolyn and Catherine,

You guys can use whatever you need. I should be embarrassed, but I'm not.

One of things that helped me alot was that I was an adult (22) before I had to really face this problem down. That makes a huge difference. I also had to take the course to get my college degree because I had managed to switch from being a BFA to a BA. I have no idea why I did that, but I realized that I was stuck with college algebra. It was horrifying. Looking back, it was a great life lesson

In high school, my parents realized there was a serious problem around junior year. Between chemistry and Algebra 2 it all caught up with me. My parents hired student tutors, but I realize now that that was a mistake. At that point, I really needed a good teacher to diagnose the problem. However, in the swirl of high school angst I'm not sure I would have listened.

It is true, the longer it goes on the more you think you have a learning disability. One of things I realized in college was that I never practided. I had internalized some notion that if I didn't get something immediately, then I would never get it. I never did homework and I never connected failure with practice. I was the victim of my own immaturity, but my teachers never really saw what was going on, and of course, I hid.

To go from failure to A's was quite an epiphany. I realized that I didn't have a learning disability. (I was convinced I did). I realized that my attitude had been all screwed up. However, when I walked out of the final that day I never looked back, that is, until I started hanging out with you guys.

My friend in college (who planned on being a math teacher) was very kind when she said something like, "Susan, you can't do Algebra 2 because you don't have your Algebra 1 skills. We'll just go back and get them, that's all." She was being kind, though. We went back to fractions and even cleaned up a lot of basic aritmetic confusion. Once I started doing math daily, it became easy.

I did tell her not to laugh at any question I had, no matter how stupid. I was often confused by math language because I think of 5 different possible meanings of the word instead of locking down on how the term was being used. I doubt I'm alone. I now really pound away at both boys about what things mean.

-- SusanS - 25 Nov 2005

I had internalized some notion that if I didn't get something immediately, then I would never get it.

About a zillion of my students (all classes -- not just low-level) have this perception. The pencil does not hit the paper until the solution arrives, fully formed, in the student's mind. For difficult or multi-stage problems, this is not a successful strategy.

One of the biggest struggles (and one that is very hard for me to teach while lecturing from the chalkboard) is teaching students that you can start a problem that you don't know how to do.

-- RudbeckiaHirta - 25 Nov 2005

Interesting. I have a mild case of dyspraxia, which is a learning disability. When I hit a problem that I think is related to the disability, mentally I sigh, and think "drat, I'm going to put a lot of effort into getting that one right."

It's because when I was four after a lot of work, my parents and speech therapist got me pronouncing "th" and "ch" correctly, so my brain had seared into it that a learning disability meant I would have to spend more time learning, not that I wasn't able at all.

-- TracyW - 26 Nov 2005

Catherine,

I'm scared of Calculus and I know it backwards and forwards and could do it in my sleep. But I'm not the least bit scared of Linear Algebra. I attribute it to the teachers I had and the pace with which it was forced down my throat.

SusanS^?,

One of things I realized in college was that I never practided. I had internalized some notion that if I didn't get something immediately, then I would never get it. I never did homework and I never connected failure with practice.

Man, that so sums it up. It's all about practice. When you realize that, provided you have enough time, you can do anything. I continue to be astonished that so many students believe this, feeling that reading their book is a sign of failure or something. No mathematician exists who hasn't read his or her book over and over. And over. And over. And fifteen more times.

Why is math different from playing the violin? I just don't get why practice is always denigrated when it's the solution.

-- BernieJohnston - 26 Nov 2005

These are great stories!

I'll get them pulled up front as soon as I can.

... if I didn't get something immediately, then I would never get it.

About a zillion of my students (all classes -- not just low-level) have this perception. The pencil does not hit the paper until the solution arrives, fully formed, in the student's mind. For difficult or multi-stage problems, this is not a successful strategy.

Sometime during this year I relaxed on this issue.

When I was first re-teaching myself elementary math, I would get very obsessive about having to figure something out now. I would feel especially annoyed, because the topic I wasn't understanding was a topic in elementary mathematics, not matrix arithmetic or something.

I would also feel quite anxious that I was never going to get it.

But I started having enough experiences of suddenly seeing something that had escaped me that I began to experience this as a norm.

I'd say, to R H, that it's great you tell your students this—and that you should just keep on telling them. Spaced repetition.

Based in my own experience, you can't really 'learn' this from direct instruction(!), but direct instruction is a big help. Carolyn told me a number of times just to relax, that things would come to me at some point.....and that was a huge help.

BUT I wasn't really able to approach math this way until I'd had the experience myself a few times.

oh!

Here's what I'm saying.

It's not that direct instruction doesn't 'work.'

It does.

If you tell your students that people doing math often don't 'get it' the first time & that's fine....that's great; most or maybe even all of them will hear you, and take that in.

But then they have to 'practice' that concept by experiencing it firsthand.

-- CatherineJohnson - 26 Nov 2005

Calculus is not that bad if you have a good algebra background, you have enough time to learn it at your own pace, and you have a good reason for learning it.

You, Ken, & Carolyn (& Bernie, I think) have all said this, and I have SERIOUSLY internalized it.

Thank you!

-- CatherineJohnson - 26 Nov 2005

The article I had in mind when I claimed tha Shelia Tobias is anti-long division

-- RudbeckiaHirta - 28 Nov 2005

On the Sheila Tobias article--

It's interesting that right after she said something about division being more or less a waste of time when there are calculators around (and my favorite, that she was not a user of mathematics like some of the others,) the guy following her said, " Sheila, you have world-class mathematicians here saying you cannot separate the process of math from the content of math." And yet, not a speck of humility. Not a pause. Amazing.

-- SusanS - 28 Nov 2005

Catherine,

I noticed when I was a kid that just the term "Calculus" sounds seriously daunting.

Just imagine in your head that it's called 'variations' instead. Or "Fred", or something. Would calculus by any other name smell as scary?

-- CarolynJohnston - 28 Nov 2005

"I noticed when I was a kid that just the term "Calculus" sounds seriously daunting."

How about tangents for differentiation and area for integration.

The derivative of a function at a point is the tangent (slope) of the function (curve, for example)

The integral of a function between to points is the area under the curve.

-- SteveH - 29 Nov 2005

Variations is definitely less scary.

Calculus is just terrifying.

And I'm not a fearful kind of person.

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Nov 2005

Steve, you're scaring me.

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Nov 2005

SHEILA TOBIAS: From my point of view, which is not that of a user of mathematics—I am an admirer of mathematics and an appreciator of mathematics—I think that studying long division for 38 weeks, as I did when I was in fourth and fifth grade, became a waste of time as soon as the calculator came in, just as learning to do square roots the long way is a waste of time.

I am very sorry I even mentioned this woman's name.

She has an M.A. in history, and she is not a 'user' of math.

swell.

I wish I could figure out who the woman was I am thinking of.

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Nov 2005

HASELTINE: Sheila, you have world-class mathematicians here saying you cannot separate the process of math from the content of math.

I'm with Susan

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Nov 2005

I made this exact point in an email to our assistant superintendent the other day.

He reported that the elementary school teacher say they like TRAILBLAZERS.

I question this assertion; I suspect there are different views amongst the teachers (and I've heard as much); I also suspect that teachers who like TRAILBLAZERS harbor some doubts as well. How often does one bring in a brand-new experimental curriculum to cries of joy and admiration?

But leaving that aside, I said that when we have a difference of opinion between professional mathematicians and elementary school teachers, I am going to listen to the views of the mathematicians & he should, too.

I suppose this is the kind of thing that gets high-level administrators stomping on low-level after-school math enrichment courses.....

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Nov 2005

This is the reason why we need a nice short, easy to administer math test for each grade level.

Whenever some administrator says how wonderful the new math curriculum is doing the reponse should be, "ok, let's test them then to see if they really are at grade level."

There is nothing like cold hard data to shut people up.

-- KDeRosa - 29 Nov 2005

I guess that Calculus is the mathematical monster under the bed. He (she?) jumps out at night and starts asking you what the limit is as 'x' goes to infinity.

-- SteveH - 29 Nov 2005

"This is the reason why we need a nice short, easy to administer math test for each grade level."

... that leads to a rigorous course in algebra in 8th grade. Our public schools only provide a little bit of algebra as a supplement to CMP. Even if they defined year-to-year tests, their mathematical destination is still too low.

The town next to ours has something called Advanced (?) Algebra in 8th grade. This sounds like they provide a proper track to honors/AP math in high school, but it's not clear whether most of the kids in the course (10-15% of the kids in 8th grade) have had outside help. This is a different issue from our town, which is all about philosophy. There is no hope for our town, and the other town might feel that the Advanced Algebra course is only for "math brains". (This other town uses MathLand in the lower grades.) They could think that they are doing a fine job and that since some of the kids get to this better material, then everything is fine. Then, the argument becomes what you can expect from the average child. Of course, I think that a full algebra course in 8th grade is within reach of most all kids.

In our town, they don't even provide the option for just a few kids. In the other town, you have to argue that the math curriculum could do a lot more.

-- SteveH - 29 Nov 2005

This is the reason why we need a nice short, easy to administer math test for each grade level.

You betcha

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Nov 2005

What is MathLand anyway?????

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Nov 2005

"What is MathLand anyway?????"

MathLand was the worst of the worst fuzzy math curricula. It was so bad and trashed by so many that the publisher (The Wright Group) dropped it. (Please explain why 2 + 2 = 4 in third grade.)

I have posed the question to our school committee in the past that even the publisher has dropped MathLand at least 3 or 4 years ago. Why are we still using it? Actually, our school is testing (?) Everyday Math in 3rd grade this year to see how it goes?!? Not first or second grade, but third. How are they going to decide? Beats me.

If you do a search of MathLand on Google, you will find a link to The Wright Group. Follow that link and you will find that they are now a McGraw-Hill company that now pushes Everyday Math. Do a search for MathLand on their site and you come up with two links. Follow each link and search for the word: MathLand. You will find nothing. It has been like this for at least a year. There is not even a link where they help schools still using MathLand to convert to Everyday Math. MathLand is just gone. Perhaps they are just too embarrassed.

MathLand - The publisher cut, ran, and wiped it off the face of the earth, but many schools (including our public schools) are still using it.

-- SteveH - 30 Nov 2005

So basically, MathLand doesn't even exist?

Is this what you're saying?

It's dead and buried, but your school is still using it?

Unbelievable.

-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Nov 2005

"Unbelievable."

I still can't believe it. I sent a list of 15 rhetorical questions to one of the members of the school committee 2/3 years ago, and again, last year, to another. Here are a few of the questions on the list. Remember, this was 2/3 years ago.

8. Why is the school still using and defending MathLand two years after even the publisher discontinued it? Why did California ban it outright? Why do so many, who even like child-centered constructivist math programs, think MathLand is the worst of the bunch? Was Everyday Math even considered? If so, why was it rejected? Were non-constructivist math programs considered?

9. Why is the school only providing an introduction to algebra (in 8th grade) that is insufficient to prepare students properly for college prep math (let alone honors math) in high school?

12. How many parents have copies of Hirsch's "What Your (First, Second, Third, etc.) Grader needs to know" and don't realize that this is NOT the education their kids are getting in our town?

13. If the school is determined to implement "inclusion" as much as possible, then why do they still seem so unsure about how to deal with above average students after all of these years? How can the school prevent inclusion from lowering average academic expectations? Can the school realistically meet the needs of the above average students with heterogeneous ability groupings of kids? Can enrichment ever replace acceleration? Is this why many parents put their kids into private schools?

15. Why does "Differentiated Instruction" seem more like differentiated homework? Are these kids really learning much during the day?

- - - - -

We can talk all we want about the value of learning the traditional long division algorithm, but that discussion will have no impact whatsoever on the basic assumptions of a school system like ours. As best I can tell, nothing changes because they philosophically pit the parents of the more able students against the parents of those with the most educational needs.

By the way, I have yet to hear back from the high school math chair about the textbooks and syllabi they use for their honors track math classes.

-- SteveH - 30 Nov 2005

Stay on it.

She owes you an answer; that's her job.

You're the taxpayer; you're the parent.

-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Nov 2005