Sex, Lies, and Algebra. We're Doing it Wrong.

Almost every adult I know tells me they are bad at math. I work with some pretty highly educated people. They all tell me they are bad at math. They never hesitate or speak in low voice when they tell me this. They are not embarrassed.

I used to hate math, that is, before I knew I love it.

I was always into words. From the time I was a small child I knew I wanted to be either a teacher or a writer. And like a true American, I earn my living doing neither of those things. In school I excelled in English, and like all kids who excel in English, I barely passed math. I wrote poetry. I even published an underground art and poetry magazine at one of my high schools before I dropped out. I took Algebra in 8th grade and 9th grade, then Geometry in 10th grade. In college I took Algebra three more times as an undergraduate, dropping it twice and barely passing the third time with a C, the lowest acceptable grade for collecting credit in the course. The point is I struggled with algebra all five times I took the course. I obviously didn't really learn much algebra any of the times I took the course.

So I was only mildly surprised, after finally passing, when I moved to "upper division" math courses in quantitative reasoning and statistics, to find that I did not struggle in these new math courses. In fact I found the upper division math courses required for an undergraduate degree in Arts and Letters to be among the easiest courses I ever completed as an undergraduate. It's not because the courses were designed to be easy. Statistics is statistics. But for some reason these courses just made sense to me, and every answer to every problem on every assignment and on every exam just seemed to so simple and logical to me. After struggling with algebra for so many years, and thinking that math was supposed to get more difficult as one progressed in the study, I should have been very surprised by the seeming ease of the upper division courses. But I was an English major by then, with an eye on a teaching credential. All I wanted to do was finish all my required math courses so I could concentrate on all the literature courses I needed to complete for my major. I was just glad the last required math courses were easier than the first ones.

As it turns out, it took a few more years for me to be really surprised.

NPR did a story not too long ago about a rapping math teacher, who was apparently reaching his inner-city students in a creative way. The story stuck in my mind because it was one of the stupidest fucking stories I had ever heard in my life and I was embarrassed to be listening to it. The story was stupid and offensive on a number of levels. I won't go into them all here. As thinking people my readers will no doubt find their own offense. Aside from the fact that there is no way a rapping math teacher is really making inner-city kids love math, and aside from the fact that if we believed he was doing such a thing, simply by rapping about math, it would by definition mean we have a very low opinion of inner-city kids, there was a bigger problem with the way the story was reported. At one point the journalist presenting the story discussed the origin of the teacher's rapper name, which he referred to as an alter ego, 2 Pi. I remember that he called himself 2 Pi because I thought that the obvious name for a rapping math teacher was MC squared, and I couldn't believe this guy missed that one, and instead went with 2 Pi.

Anyway when describing the origin of the name 2 Pi, the journalist explained that 2 Pi was taken from a mathematical formula, but that he (the journalist) "wasn't going to try to explain what it means."

I know right? That's what I was thinking. What the hell? A presumably college-educated professional journalist whose work is heard and respected all across this country can't even begin to explain the formula for finding the circumference of a circle? Is that how far we have fallen as a people? He can't explain 2(pi)r? He should have asked a sixth grader. Because here in California, sixth graders are required to know and use formulas for finding the circumference (and area) of a circle.

So why does this adult, professional journalist think it is okay that he can't explain something so simple to his audience? And why do my friends and colleagues think it is okay to be bad at math, even if they excel in other areas?

It's because of the way we have been teaching math for fifty years.

And no, rapping about math is not the solution.

After I finished my Bachelor's degree in English I started teaching. I had been a substitute teacher for a while when I got my first summer school job - teaching Algebra. It didn't matter that my only degrees at the time were in Behavioral Science and English. It didn't matter that I had taken Algebra several times myself before barely passing. This was the job available. My principal seemed concerned only that I was an adult who could be in a classroom all summer. As a substitute English teacher I had attained a reputation for being able to "handle" a class of high school kids without sending many of them to the principal's office, and that was apparently enough to qualify me for the position. I had a pregnant wife at home and no better prospects for summer work so I grabbed the opportunity. Carpe fucking diem.

The interesting part of this story is not what I did for my students. Because I did teach algebra that summer, even if my student's didn't learn any algebra. I promise I never did anything for them. The interesting part of this story is what happened to me, in my head, which changed my perspective on math forever.

I taught myself algebra. I stayed more or less a chapter ahead of my students all summer. Each day of class I taught them what I had just learned the night before. But I found, unlike the many frustrating years I spent with Algebra early in life, that it wasn't really that hard to understand. I just needed a reason to understand it. And while in my case the reason to finally learn Algebra was to collect a badly needed paycheck while (hopefully) not actually damaging children, the specific reason, as it turns out, is not important. Any reason would have done. I finally understood algebra as a concept, and I knew what it was good for. When I was finally forced by my own reasons to just figure it out, I was able to do what I now wish I had been able to do as a child. I was able to learn and understand the concepts of algebra, not just the process.

All of us who were raised in American public schools clearly recall spending hours in rows of desks while a felt-pen wielding numbers-chef hovered tirelessly above an overhead projector. At least half of us remember also being bored, confused, disinterested, or stoned (the stoned kids don't actually remember). Very few kids in those classes were clearly engaged and understanding what the teachers were teaching. I know this because most of us, as adults, still don't understand the processes we were taught for adding and subtracting polynomials, or for solving systems of linear equations. Even now as intelligent and professional members of modern society we don't exactly recall why we would even ever do any of those things. And we aren't worried about it much. Because it is okay to not be good at math. Everyone says so.

I mean not me. After my major breakthrough in algebra I understood why those "upper division" math classes had strangely seemed so easy to me. It was because in those classes I was taught concepts, and the processes worked themselves out. I know now that I am a conceptual learner. I am a big picture guy. I want a reason to do something. I want madness to go with method. I quickly enrolled in graduate school and went on to study some fairly high-end statistics and psychometrics. That's the kind of badass I am.

In America we teach math as a process. Starting in elementary school, this seems to be the only way we teach it. Even today, math teachers, whether first-grade teachers teaching math alongside other subjects, or high school teachers who teach only math all day long, start with a chapter in the district-adopted textbook, and move sequentially through the chapters throughout the school year. This is the process for teaching a process. It is very linear. It starts with simple problems and builds to more complex problems. Kids practice the procedures they learn every night by repeating them over and over again until they hate math for the monotony, if for no other reason. As it turns out, not all kids are procedural learners.

Don't get me wrong, some kids are procedural learners. This works for some kids. It is usually the cooperative kids who like to please adults. The kids who do what they are told without asking too many questions. And that's fine. Those kids grow up to be math teachers. And they teach math to new kids using the same process. It's like Amway with a track team.

But most of us get lost in those classes. Maybe we were sick the day we learned to find the greatest common factor. And after that little else makes sense. So we are lost, and we stay lost, because the teacher has moved on to another chapter. And our grades sink lower and lower, and we learn to hate math, and we think we are not good at it. Because when we teach math as a process, and we miss an important part of that process, it is hard to make sense of what comes next in the process. And so it goes.

So now after fifty years or more of teaching math this way we have a serious problem. We have a serious problem in our culture when we all think it is okay to be bad at math. In this modern world, it is clearly not okay to be bad at math.

This would never happen with reading. It is decidedly not okay to not be able to read in our culture. Professional adults do not proudly proclaim that they are bad at reading without lowering their voice. The same is true with students, and kids get the message early.

First we lie to them. From the earliest ages we teach mathematical lies to children. We teach them plus and minus instead of positive and negative numbers. We tell them zero is the lowest number. Anyone with a checking account knows that is not true. We teach them that "diamonds" and "balls" are shapes, because we think they are too stupid to understand words like quadrilateral and sphere. And we persist in these lies for years, all while they are learning to like school and trust teachers. And then they get to about fourth grade and everything starts to change. We tell them that zero is not the lowest number, that a diamond is not a shape, that multiplication is not denoted with an x but instead we use parentheses, and the second-grade teachers they loved as much as their mothers LIED to them. It is a cruel world. And to make matters worse, this is the age where most kids discover that their parents can no longer help them with their math homework. For many years both state and national test results have shown that this is when kids start being bad at math. It's no wonder.

When my oldest son was in second grade he was having some trouble reading. His teachers quickly held a series of parent conferences and got a district reading specialist involved. He was pulled out of his regular class a couple hours a day just to work with a specialist on his reading. The effort was complete and everyone participated. Even at home, his mother and stepfather removed all toys and games from his bedroom, leaving only books for him to discover. It worked like a charm. In a matter of months he was reading at grade level, and soon beyond.

Stories like this happen all the time in public schools. Because everyone knows that reading is important. Everyone knows that to compete for comfort and prosperity in a global economy one must be able to read and retain information. Unfortunately this never happens when kids fall behind in math. Not the same way. We all seem to recognize that math is important. We even seem to recognize that we have, as a nation, been falling behind other industrialized nations in math knowledge for more that 20 years now. We recognize that the future of technology and information processing completely dependent on math knowledge. We import many thousands of engineers and other mathematicians from countries whose students are far outperforming our own children in math. And still, it is okay to be bad at math.

I don't have the answers, as usual. But it does seem to me that it might be reasonable to try teaching math a different way, and see if more kids catch on. We should teach math as a concept, not just a process for illusory ends. It worked for me. But no matter what, we must stop just accepting that math is too hard for most of us. We need to stop teaching in the manner we do, where by high school neither students nor adults really care whether anyone is good at math. We need to stop just accepting that most kids will not be good at math. Because by not changing our actions and attitudes, that is exactly what we are doing now.

Stop saying it's okay to be bad at math. Stop being proud of that.

Or don't. As it turns out I don't actually care that much.