The children scream, the work overwhelmed: Would a life without exertion be worth striving for? Not at all, it is the agony and effort that make people feel meaningful.
from
Sebastian Herrmann
Father and son sit at the kitchen table and struggle with differences. The two of them use terms like subtrahend or minuend, write terms on checkered pages of notebooks, do arithmetic, erase, sigh, write, scribble, groan, moan and say silent prayers that this ordeal will soon come to an end. Father and son leaf through exercise books and notebooks, look for the pages with the solutions and consult the syllabus that the teacher has drawn up. Really, still that much? Math is learned, the first school assignment of this year is due in the subject and now the stuff has to be practiced so that the bumpy entry into the fifth grade at the grammar school does not become completely frustrating. Differences are practiced, sums are calculated, terms are set up, in which three kinds of brackets are inserted, signs have to be observed and word problems have to be deciphered, which sometimes let the involved adults burn through the math synapses for a short time.