Or, I love mathematics, and you should, too.
In response to a post by Hemant Mehta about http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2012/07/31/why-algebra-is-necessary-rebutting-andrew-hacker/">Why Algebra Is Necessary
When I was a math tutor, I saw this problem before me every day. The problem wasn't that math was too hard for people or that they thought the wrong way or use the wrong side of their brains for it, it was that they were convinced they couldn't do it and thus were unable to generalize the skills they used in one problem to solving the next problem. You talk them through one, explain it, watch the lightbulb go on, brilliance enshrined, and then they move on the the next problem and -stonewall- "I don't know anything about this; I can't do it." Every. Single. Student. I always expected it when I had a student who was an older woman. It was a junior college, so there were a lot of those. They came from a time when women were explicitly told they couldn't do math. What I found is that we don't do that anymore. We just tell everyone they can't do math. So I watched for opportunities to break that construct down for my other students and it worked.
One of my most commonly aired complaints about the state of education in this country is that the people I knew who went into education were all the girls who hated math. And now they're math teachers.
I *love* math. I even considered staying in college for a couple more years and doing another degree in it. I still think about it. It's the one degree that will actually leave you genuinely employable at the 4-year level. Magic. I didn't, in the end, make this choice. I probably should have. I am missing so much knowledge that I could use in my field. I'm working on fixing that, which is hard outside of a structured program. But that's another post. I haven't always loved math. I was really good at it before school when I would do my brother's math homework. Then my first grade math and science teacher was mean as a snake. After my father got sick, we moved to DC and I missed a year's worth of content because the schools in Alabama were so far behind. Then I really hated it. Especially those damn Mad Minute worksheets. I couldn't remember my times tables to save my life. I didn't understand why I should learn them *this week* instead of just getting used to what the answers were.
But, in 5th grade, there were a couple of kids in my class who wondered why I wasn't in the smart kid math since I was in the smart kid reading and the smart kid everything else (we were split in three based on entrance testing for team teaching). They decided it was because I didn't know what PI was and filed a complaint with the authorities that I should be switched. This was unsuccessful. Later that year, when the bookmobile came around, I bought http://www.amazon.com/Hate-Mathematics-Brown-Paper-School/dp/0316117412/">The I Hate Mathematics Book and it changed my life. I knew what PI was. And I loved math. I still hated those Mad Minutes, but I loved math. This stuck right up until I struggled so hard in College Algebra, Trig, and Calculus (the first time). I know why I did now: I was missing chunks of knowledge, the same reason I had struggled before.
When I was retaking Calculus and once again camped out in the tutoring center as I had been all through high school (all the advanced math courses at my high school were dual enrollment), something about it clicked and I got it. So I started helping the other students in my class. Then I was helping the Business Calc kids. Then the Math for Poets (Liberal Arts Math) kids. Then the tutoring center hired me. And that was when I started filling in the blanks of what I had missed. This was when the full weight of the truth about math hit me. It is the language of the universe and a mystical and wonderful thing. I also saw before me the cost of the lies we tell about math. Math isn't hard. It isn't something that Americans are bad at because we're too creative. It is something we have chosen to convince ourselves we can't do. And, as a result, we have elected to cripple ourselves and our children. And the impact goes beyond not being able to balance a checkbook. It means we are incapable of problem solving and critical thinking and are being left behind in a world built out of these parts. It means we are being locked back in the prison of the Dark Ages in many terrifying ways.
My reference to the Dark Ages isn't the histrionics of a nerd. It is the real history of what people thought about mathematics and numerals. (See: http://www.amazon.com/The-Nothing-that-Is-Natural/dp/0195142373">The Nothing that Is: A Natural History of Zero.) It is also a trap we are in danger of falling into all over again. We are in a clash of cultures. But it isn't against the Muslim world. It is against ourselves and our propensity for willful ignorance. When someone is taught to say "I hate this; when am I ever going to use..." they are saying that they have no need of advancing, that they have already abandoned critical thinking. This isn't questioning authority. It isn't the roots of skepticism. It is the battle cry of retrogression.
The problem with the way math is taught in our school system is that we have given in. We have legitimized this claim that math is useless for everyone except nerds and the rest of us are better off in other classes. We have done this through relenting to application questions and shifting focus to one area of study over another and creating Liberal Arts Math courses. Whether more people need Statistics instead of Calculus isn't the question we should be asking. The question is why do most people stop learning one of the most basic underpinnings of modern thought early in high school? Why do most college students only take two semesters of math? Why are any social science students graduating without advanced skills in both Calculus and Statistics? Why aren't we teaching real Math for Poets classes that focus on complex rhythms and the wonder of patterns. These are the domain of math, not humanities. Poetry isn't just word play. It is the juncture of letter and number. Why doesn't every student take a course in logic? This is the failing: the idea that math is a set of tools to answer specific questions generally relating to hard sciences. But while this is part of the truth, math is much more than that. It is no less than the language and framework of modern thought and the map of even modern religious argumentation. And we have dropped the ball on ensuring that everyone is given the legend to this map.
Instead of showing people how they already use math everyday, we have reinforced this idea that most math is worthless. And because we have done that, we have lost.
I wish I could say I thought you were wrong. Unfortunately, I am pretty much in agreement with you. We are in fact headed for a new Dark Ages. I wonder where the Irish Monks furiously copying texts will be found while all around us books burn.
ReplyDeleteI tutor math too, and I hit on an analogy that works especially well with adult women who believe they can't do math. I tell them that math is like cooking, and to imagine their husbands (universally their husbands haven't been able to cook) trying to follow a recipe from any recipe book on the shelf. Probably, they will fail miserably (mine can't even make pancakes. For real). But the reason that they'll fail is because they don't know the difference between soft peaks and hard peaks with egg whites. They don't know how to get their particular stovetop to a nice pancakes temperature (because truly, that sweet spot is very narrow and takes lots of practice to find!). They don't know how to carmelize onions, or blanch tomatoes, etc etc. It's not because they, or anyone else, is incapable of these things. It's because they don't know the vocabulary and they haven't practiced the skills.
ReplyDeleteWell, math is the same thing. So many people think they're awful at math because they don't understand it immediately. I did't understand how to beat egg whites at first too, or sew a french seam, but I read about it, practiced, messed it up a few times, and eventually got it. So, math is the same as everything else. It's tragic that so many people think that if they don't understand it on the first pass, they're just incapable.
If you have any advice on getting teenagers motivated to put in the time and effort it takes to learn math, I'm all ears!!