Back in February, WaPo published an opinion article by a dude by the name of Travis Meier who is a member of that informal group who hates math, particularly in its abstract form:
For most of us, the formula was one of many alphabet soup combinations crammed into our heads in high school long enough to pass a math test, then promptly forgotten. I’m queasy all over again just thinking about it. As a functioning adult in society, I have no use for imaginary numbers or the Pythagorean theorem. I’ve never needed to determine the height of a flagpole by measuring its shadow and the angle of the sun.
Only 22 percent of the nation’s workers use any math more advanced than fractions, and they typically occupy technical or skilled positions. That means more than three-fourths of the population spends painful years in school futzing with numbers when they could be learning something more useful.
I’m talking about applied logic. This branch of philosophy grows from the same mental tree as algebra and geometry but lacks the distracting foliage of numbers and formulas. Call it the art of thinking clearly. We need this urgently in this era of disinformation, in which politicians and media personalities play on our emotions and fears.
Sure. I’ve good friends who hated algebra. But does that justify not teaching it? Full disclosure: I didn’t find high school algebra all that hard. Don’t ask me about trig, I can feel my blood pressure going up just thinking about it. Geometry, fun. Proofs, satisfying. Calculus? College professors didn’t get that across to me, sad to say.
But let’s talk about what Meier doesn’t mention, and what I’ve not thought about until recently, eh? What are the benefits of studying something and doing badly?
- The wagon before the horse fallacy: Substituting applied logic for the more useful algebra just because many students don’t do well is to deny those that will do well the chance to learn it. What do you tell them when they find their way to college denied because the school failed to teach them?
- School doesn’t just teach facts, it should teach ways of thinking. That must include coping with hard subjects, and coping with failure. Think about it: Is there anything worth doing that is really damn easy? How many folks just get bored and walk away from easy things? But hard things? Oh, sure, folks can show me examples of people giving up on hard problems, but I can counter that they have had a poor education, or the problem happens to be impossible to solve. Hard problems require persistence, mental strategies for approaching learning, seeking other sources of education, and a few other skills that are learned by trying.
- Failure is a fact of life. High school should teach you that. How do you deal with it? It’s better to learn how to appropriately deal with failure in high school than on the job.
- Returning to algebra, failure teaches the student about their limits. It’s very useful to know that your mind doesn’t have the abstract turn to it required by algebra. It helps shape your approach to post high school activities.
- Math, such as algebra and other disciplines, is the real basis of much of society, such as civil engineering, physics, computer engineering, economics, heavens I could go on and on, is built on. By trying to teach algebra, we are implicitly communicating to the students that, no, building a tall structure isn’t a matter of simple power politics and, goodness, wizardry. No, it’s a matter of learning and thinking, and that idea that they can do it too makes society more cohesive.
I’m sure there’s more, but I’ll leave it at that. School teaches more than facts, more than systems of thought. It should teach us about limitations, coping strategies, and the general business of living as another limited human being.
