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Mood: Angry ]
[ Currently: Getting read to go shopping ]
So on Google+ Marvin Ryan Vista posted a thought
| Quote: |
| "I’ve never been able to do math" gets a chuckle. "I’ve never been able to read" gets awkward silence. Why? |
And someone followed up with
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| here’s a hypothesis. Most of us can get on fine in this world without ever using what we learned in middle-school about proving geometry theorems, and high school trigonometry or calculus. But we cant not be able to read. |
Now I am a teacher and part of what I teach is Math, and the above thinking gets my blood boiling. So I wrote a follow-up and I liked it so much, I wanted to preserve it. So here it is below:
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| Exactly. I am a teacher, and the number of times I have parents chuckle as they say "He gets from me. I don’t get math either." In all my years of teaching, I have never had a parent give me the same excuse for their child not reading.
The reality is, there is a shame in our society in not being able to read. There is no correlating shame for not being able to do math. And [name redacted], not to pick on you, but your statement shows the fundamental problem. Math is not just geometry theorems or trig. Math is the ability to add numbers, to estimate, to measure time, to make change when you buy or sell something, stuff we do every day. In reality, how much of your high school English do you still use? Can you parse a sentence? How about look for metaphors in Shakespeare? Written a long form free verse retelling of Great Expectations recently? Yet even if you answered no, you consider yourself literate. But because we think of math as Pythagoras and differential calculus, we grant permission for it to be elevated to something that only the Poindexters of the world can understand. We make it OK for someone to dismiss one of the underpinnings of our world. A basic understanding of and ability to do math is as crucial to our society as the ability to read. I believe that it is that legitimizing of math "illiteracy" that is in part responsible for the financial crisis we are currently in. We ignored the numbers and went for the "fairy tale". It’s time we move beyond "Math is hard" and tell people that they can do math. If they can add, they are doing math. If they can tell time, they are doing math. If they are looking at gas prices and making a decision to fill up because they price has dropped significantly, they are doing math. As Charlie Epps said, "We all use math, every day." |