Dr. Frank's What's-it

Yes, there's a lot of truth to that. As a college math teacher with some command of English, I've had students try to switch to my sections because they "can't understand" their foreign-born teacher. These students have obviously been left underprepared by their high schools.

I hope that picture on Gawker isn't of a math teacher, but rather of a student, since there appears to be a major arithmetic error going from the second to the third line.

Come on kid, order of operations.

I don't think public high schools are necessarily run to prepare students for college in this country. They simply provide a free extremely simple eduation where each graduating student will be able read, write, and arythmacize. Because a high school deploma (or lack their of) is such a powerful signaling tool to employers, the standards for graduation must be kept extremely low as employers (and others) need to be able to tell the difference between a person with a simple education and one with none at all.

When I was in college, the incomprehensibility of the foreign-born TAs was legendary. I had a professor for first-semester chemistry who came from some country where the L and R sounds are not clearly distinguished. Eventually he had to explain the concepts "molarity" and "molality". Hilarity ensued. Poor fellow, he really did seem to think he was pronouncing them differently.