I vote for Nemeth Code (Braille math notation)!
@sue22 well the question was about the 1 2 3… so it was really just a silly question as people wouldn’t really know it’s originally Arabic
Next they should ask should math invented by Arabs be banned…
@PurpleTitan Hah. You’re right to a point.
If the majority of the world is stupid, then at least we are just average.
Racism sucks. Most people aren’t racist. Most people are kind and giving. But really stressed out and just trying to get by this short time here. It’s a frenetic world.
Elitism sucks too.
@airway1 - do you watch Veep? One candidate’s platform.
@Marilyn a few episodes but will YouTube as we speak
Hahaha wow they had a Muslim math funny and add science o my back to i, ii, iii and …
If we’re so uninformed, how do we expect our democracy to work well?
The original question was, “Should schools in America teach Arabic Numerals as part of their curriculum?”
I assume the question meant Western Arabic numerals, our 1,2,3, but modern Arabs use Eastern Arabic numerals ( ١ ٢ ٣ ). Anyone who’s seen signs or banners in Arabic containing numbers and who wasn’t aware that our numeric system is called the Arabic system could be excused for answering “no.”
Back in 1776 there weren’t a lot of t20 grads to help out. Lots of farmers. We managed.
But a good start is to bring US geography and some basic civics back into vogue.
Back in 1776, only a few can vote and we were lucky to have some truly extraordinary leaders.
If you allow Arabic numerals, next thing you know you will have Shariah Law! And babies wiped with Muslim (sic) cloth!
I still see it as a minor gap in education that can be filled in with a sentence or two and may or may not be remembered, but often times these little things are remembered as they’re the “break” the brain gets from actually doing math. It’s got a higher chance of being remembered than the number of ATP in the electron transport chain from Bio.
It might not be as critical as knowing the air we breathe normally isn’t 100% oxygen as that one could have rather “interesting” consequences if anyone were to get it wrong, but many of us know lots of facts we don’t necessarily use all the time. At the very least it’s turning on a new brain neuron in a teen - one they can reuse later for something else if they wish - so no harm.
Then there’s the advantage of not looking dumb if it comes up in a poll or on trivia night. 
I knew about Arabic numbers of course, but I was wondering what the original symbols looked like. And this became interesting.
Wikipedia calls this the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. Europeans called it Arabic because it was introduced to them by the Arabs. The Arabs called it the Hindu numbering system because it was introduced to them by India, where it was invented.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu%E2%80%93Arabic_numeral_system
The symbols most similar to modern numbers are in the Devanagari and Gujarati scripts of India, although some of the numbers seem transposed. The Arabic numbers are very different.
I saw a YouTube video the other day (Jimmy Kimmel) where they asked people if they were worried about possible extinction of homo sapiens. The answers were pretty funny.
I wonder if the people who are against Arabic numerals have ever been asked their thoughts about something that is much more prevalent: Dihydrogen Monoxide
If they hadn’t heard of it, but were told it was a key component of soil erosion, climate change, and used regularly by all criminals, I wonder if they would support an outright ban.
Or take hashish, become assassins, keep a harem and impose tariffs.
It has not always worked well. The first US government structure, the Articles of Confederation, lasted only about eight years. Since 1789, when the US Constitution came into force, there were notable incidents of governmental problems, including the inability to deal with slavery that led to a bloody Civil War, some of whose hard-won gains were reversed with the end of the Reconstruction. Other bad decisions can easily be found, such as foreign policy mistakes that led to entanglements in Vietnam and Iraq and/or made such entanglements more costly. Members of various minorities through history have often had difficulty exercising the political and civil rights that they were supposed to have. A tendency to spend faster than tax revenue means increasing budget deficits and national debt. Today, everyone seemingly agrees that medical care is an expensive mess in the US, but there is so little agreement on a solution that any change will likely be corrupted by having to get buy-in from numerous interests and ideologies.
Of course, this does not mean that dictatorship or one-party state is generally better, since most such governments govern worse and more oppressively for most of the people who live there.
OK, so I laughed when I saw the thread.
But the reality is that our kids are learning so much that something’s got to give. In this case, it’s the name of the numbers they use every day.
When I was in elementary school in the late 60’s, there was a huge emphasis on the 3 R’s. We diagrammed sentences. We wrote and rewrote and rewrote those times tables. We did SRA reading. Spelling words. We knew state capitals. And, yes, we knew what Arabic numerals were.
Kids today have all that. And stranger danger. And the dangers of obesity and AIDS. And computer literacy. And the dangers of revealing too much online–though obviously that could use a bit more emphasis. They’re expected to be global citizens in a globe that’s everchanging. There’s the big push for cooperative learning. And of course STEM. As evidenced by this site, kids in 8th and 9th grade are concerned about their college applications. And the list goes on and on and on.
So, while it makes a good punchline, I’m not sure it’s a big deal that so many can’t recognize the phrase Arabic Numerals. I’m happy if they’re competent at dealing with them… if they know those times table when I ask them to factor a polynomial and give me two numbers whose product is -72 and whose sum is 1.
I’d argue that uninformed citizenry presents a much bigger challenge to democracy in today’s interconnected world with the proliferation in channels of instant communication. If you’re uninformed, your opinions and actions are more likely to be swayed by misinformation, half-truth, or even outright falsehood.
So the joke is on us, the, supposedly, “educated”? The “unwashed masses” actually know more than we do?
Whatever.