Math in the News
By Dr. Eugene Maier |
I ran across three mentions of school math in the news a few weeks ago. All incidental. All negative.
The first occurred in a story about Ira Glasser, who is retiring as executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. The story said he "was an odd leader" for the ACLU in that he didn't have a background in law. Prior to his involvement with the ACLU, he was a mathematics professor. "It was good training," the story reports, "of all the audiences he has faced, he says, none have been so hostile as college students in required freshman calculus."
Then, in Friday's sports page, a story about the upcoming Oregon-Wisconsin football game concerned the uncertainty of who would be playing for Wisconsin because of the possibility of players fulfilling suspensions. The Oregon coach had given up trying to figure out what personnel his team would face. The paper reports him saying: "I'm not smart enough to figure out the scenarios... 11 players suspended for three games, 15 players for one. Ä It's like one of those math problems I hated in high school.... It's a waste of our energy to worry about it."
A couple of days later, a commentary on the Napster situation appeared in Sunday's business section. The author identifies the founder of Napster as "the sweet kid I suffered through high school calculus with."
I suspect most people breezed by these comments without pause. Perhaps a wry smile appeared as thoughts of their own less-than-pleasurable experiences in school math were triggered. A few, however, may have reacted as I did, identifying with the professor trying to teach calculus to defiant students who are there because it's required. I was reminded of all those pre-meds who, for the most part, didn't care a wit about calculus and yet wanted A's so they could get into med school. (I have a vivid memory of running into a former student. The first thing he said to me was, "You're the one who kept me from being a doctor." I had given him a D in calculus.)
Comments about hating math and references to hostile and struggling students in calculus classes are commonplace. But they attract little attention. The public doesn't fret about them as it does about the rank of U. S. students in international math assessments or the math scores on state-mandated tests. It should. If the goal of school math is math literate adults, then the reaction of adults to their school math experiences ought to be given as much attention as student scores on state and national tests.
Hatred and hostility are not hallmarks of literacy. And raising test scores isn't the cure. I suspect the current emphasis on high-stake tests and the accompanying move to stiffen math requirements--such as the "algebra for all" movement—will only intensify the ill will adults harbor against math.
The rationale for requirements warrants scrutiny. The prevalent attitude seems to be that school math ought to prepare one for every eventuality. If there is some chance, however remote, that someday one will encounter, say, a quadratic equation, then include it in the curriculum. Then there is the insidious practice of using math requirements to weed students out of programs, for example, requiring a full-blown calculus course for pre-meds—I never have understood what learning calculus has to do with practicing medicine.
When I was chair of a small college math department, to the surprise of my colleagues in other departments, I fought against establishing a college-wide math requirement. I had two reasons. First of all, I didn't want students in math classes who didn't want to be there and, secondly, the math department had all the students it could handle. I had no control over what other departments and programs required, and if a student questioned me about why they had to take a