Last week, I wrote a letter for the “Free Speech” section regarding the University of Chicago Math Curriculum.

Even though it may offend some that I am referring to a “Northern” curriculum, I feel strongly about this math program, so I am writing back, this time including my name.

There are upwards of 4 million students using ”Chicago Math,” and it is tested and implemented in the South, not just the North.

I have no experience with it in Southern schools, but my children used it for before moving to South Carolina in 2004, and it is exceptional.

To clarify for madmike of PTC, I am not from Chicago, neither of my children ever went to school in Illinois, and I am not going back home — I am home.

I lived in several states in the Midwest because my husband’s job has transferred us nine times in the past 20 years. I learned new things in each place I lived, but I was never told to “go home.”

I actually took this as a compliment; it meant that I was contributing to my community rather than just sitting around and complaining.

While I am not a native Georgian, I live here, I love it here, and I want to see the state and its children do well.

When I see that the math curriculum is struggling and I hear teachers, parents, and students frustrated with the changes and lack of progress, what kind of person would I be to not try and help?

It is free advice; take it for what it is worth, but pushing people and their ideas away simply because they were born north of the Mason-Dixon Line is no smarter than refusing a drink because it is in the wrong colored glass. There is a big difference between pride and prejudice.

If you really want to peeve the “Yankees,” knock them out of their top slots in math on standardized tests and score higher than “them” on the SAT.

We don’t need to recreate the wheel. For more information go to: http://socialsciences.uchicago.edu/ucsmp/.

Vicki Lynn LeClaire

Fayetteville, Ga.