I’ve spent my life avoiding math whenever possible. Whole numbers requiring manipulation beyond addition or subtraction make me anxious. Fractions and equations irritate me, Cleveland.com reports. The undergraduate school I enrolled in the mid-80s appealed because it had no math requirement for graduation. My condition, I’m told, is called arithmophobia. Anyway, I’ve decided to confront this irrational condition head-on starting Monday. That’s when I will start taking an online pre-algebra course at Cuyahoga Community College. … To call this sort of convenient academic offering anything less than revolutionary is an understatement. The way we learn now and will continue to learn in the near future bears little resemblance to the recent past. The way I see it, there is no longer an excuse for ignorance or unchallenged academic phobias. There is no longer an excuse for being a dummy. And that is the beauty of the oceans of academic information now suddenly being made widely available on the Internet through MOOC’s, or massive open online courses.
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