“Andrew Hacker, an outspoken critic of mandatory algebra education, is asked to defend his contentions at the National Museum of Mathematics.” …
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/andrew-hacker-debates-the-value-of-math
Dad showed me how to use a hammer. A hammer is a practical tool but difficult to use. People shouldn’t be exposed to such high end tools. My neighbor drives nails with rocks and gets along fine. His house looks like he drives nails with rocks, and the hammer lobby is hot after him, but …
And don’t let’s talk about pliers.
I work at a very global company. This morning I exchanged emails with a number of my colleges located around the world. I am happy to report that broken English works really well and we did not even have to use complex literary constructs in our communications. It is clear that if we abolish English and Literature studies in school we will not lose much but we will further improve graduation rates. Let’s not rob our children the happy childhood they so richly deserve by forcing them to study a bunch of useless subjects.
Hammers and Nails 101 I would still keep in the curriculum just in case every other career is outsourced abroad.
We’re talking ALGEBRA here, not higher math. What other “inessential” subjects should also be eliminated? Heck, I can readily google info-- maybe nix history, science, foreign language, too.
Education sharpens the mind, each subject in its own ways.
And having a controversial stance can certainly get one attention in the media.
You bet I’ve hammered with a rock. And the heel of a shoe.
The problem with this is kids tend to change their minds about what they want to do with the rest of their life. So you never know what they will need or use. You never know when a student might meet a great teacher and fall in love with math.
Math class is tough.
You take algebra in high-school not because you are ever going to use it as a grown-up. You take it so that you understand some fundamental math, or at least what it can do. You don’t take it for its practical value to your life or career, though innumeracy is as harmful as illiteracy to our society.
A small percentage of those who take algebra in high school will ever use it again. Of those, a smaller percentage will use it in their career, their work. But exposure to basic math – including algebra – in middle- or high-school will identify some who are quite capable and some who are gifted in it. The core curriculum helps to identify those people, or exposes them to tools that they may find useful in later life. The same is true with reading and writing. We study literature and language not because we are going to make our careers in them, but because reading and writing and speaking effectively are tools that everybody can use in their daily life.
Thus, I think the practical value of a broad education in core subjects (art, literature, mathematics, science, social science) is less important than its civilizing and socializing value. Students learn about how the world works, how people think, how people stay healthy, how they fight wars, and how they make more people. They may not apply their learning to specific jobs, to a career. They are applying them to life. And for a small percentage of the subjects they are exposed to, they are learning practical skills that may help them to earn a living or do good things in the future.
I have a close friend who HATES math - she really has zero aptitude for it. But she wants to get a teaching certificate in Maine. Guess what? She needs to pass a test that includes algebra in order to get that certificate. Even if she doesn’t want to teach math! So it’s a good thing to know.
But we do use it in all sorts of practical applications.
Oh this hits home - I have a Math degree and so does my daughter. You need to learn algebra to learn how to think . Just like you need to learn science for a basic understanding of how the world works, history to understand current events, english to be able to communicate with people, etc. Math teaches you analytical skills that help you function in life.
Nobody is saying everybody needs calculus or advanced physics or to be able to write hundred page papers on Shakespeare, but basic skills in these areas teach you how to learn and how to understand the world.
Most jobs require the use of spreadsheets these days and very few don’t have any math associated with them (even if it is just giving change in the grocery store). Math is more important today in all jobs for this reason!
Knowing HS math helps us understand the world around us. Even if we forget most of the things we learn we know there is an explanation for why things work as they do. It is a shame more understanding of math principles is not emphasized in our society. We also need better teaching methods or testing methods, ie not making the common core the goal or changing that. I can think of so many ways a math understanding makes problem solving better. In pop music understanding how changes in amplifiers works (physics uses math) is just one example. I have never understood why humanities are deemed enriching while math has not. Abstract thinking is good for the mind.
I could go on and on. btw- we don’t need multiplication and many other arithmetic skills either- we can just keep adding many times. Math principles offer many ways of streamlining problem solving. Overlearning is needed to retain the used information. Plus- do we want a society that just takes on faith the results of math?
While not the subject of the article, I do think people who are non-mathy would benefit more from probability/statistics than calculus. I do think calculus gets fetishized. And I was a math major myself (and liked every aspect - topography, game theory, etc).
It’s not just math. It’s anything.
Years ago I worked with a woman who wasn’t worried that her kids couldn’t spell. (“After all, that is what spell check is for”). Well, if your spelling is off enough, spell check isn’t going to catch it. Or if your spelling is off enough that it is another word entirely… such craziness.
She also wasn’t worried about simple math either. That’s what calculators are for…
Is anyone really saying that no one needs basic math? The real question is where to draw the line. I would say Algebra 1 and Geometry. Probably most college bound students should take Algebra 2, Precalculus, and Statistics; however, I stop short of saying they are necessary. I suspect that upon closer examination the debate may turn out to be less polarized than it initially appears. There is certainly a tendency toward citing extreme examples. I’m probably an extreme example myself. I have no problem with basic math; I can usually do the calculations in my head. I hit a wall in Algebra 1 (9th grade), and an even bigger wall in Algebra 2 (11th grade). I never ran into anything that difficult in undergrad or grad school. My main concern is that we avoid cases where students are not allowed to pursue disciplines where their aptitude is high because they are below average in another.
Actually, I do use basic algebra in my life as a grown up. However, I have never again needed to recite “The Canterbury Tales” in Old English. The one class I wish had been mandated when I was a teen? Economics.
Let me describe a situation. Many years ago, I was negotiating the price of a car I was buying. I was also applying for financing. But I told them that I will buy the car only if they come down another couple of hundred dollars. The salesman told me ``let me talk to the manager’’.
After waiting a while, the manager came out and talked to me. He said, good news – they have brought down my monthly payment from $XX to $(XX-20). This seemed too good to be true, so I carefully looked at the paper-work. They had changed the loan from 60 months to 66 months! I told them straight-out: ``good try, but I am too Maths-savy to fall for this’’. Next, they came down the couple of hundreds dollars on the price to a point that I considered fair.
My point is: don’t you need at least algebra II to manage your every-day finances in today’s world? Understand compound interest, some basic probability/statistics, make sensible decisions, and so on.
This would not have fooled me at all, and I struggled to get a D- in Algebra 2. Also, one basic rule of car buying is to negotiate the price before discussing financing. While I do understand compound interest, I would probably consult a table in the interest of time. If I don’t have access to one, I can still manage.
Once you start trying to think of what core parts of a basic grade school education you “don’t need,” what core subjects you can “live life without,” it usually goes downhill from there. When you start dismissing the value of academic core learning, you very quickly limit your ability to do any form of advanced work.
We’ve discussed the ideas of this guy before, and frankly I don’t see why they are given any attention. It’s like listening to the opinion of someone who was too lazy to finish college, who argues why college doesn’t matter. It’s always cringeworthy and borne of ignorance.
Some math knowledge is necessary. Algebra and Geometry are essential tools for anyone. For some professions, much higher levels of math are needed.
However, the idea that one cannot be a top high school student and go to an elite university unless one performs well in functions, analytic geometry and calculus is silly. The idea that fully HALF of your vital SAT test score is a math assessment is even more silly. It makes no more sense than requiring everyone to study Ancient Latin, and assessing them for college using a test based on their latin conjugations.
I say this as someone who did very well in math and used my high math test scores to get into a top university. However, once I was done with college I never used any math beyond geometry again, nor have at least 80 percent of the successful professionals and academics that I know.
I suspect that as a society, we overvalue math because it is so easy to test for and weed people out. Reading and writing and science and critical thinking are all more difficult to evaluate - but for most people they are much more important.