"You'll Use This Everyday for the Rest of Your Life..."

[Wahoo Redux]

Hi all, can't sleep and so I thought I'd just bop this out there.  Rambles a bit. 

I have a distinct memory of junior high.  Our algebra teacher, Mr. Ideal (obviously not a real name) was fond of the slogan "You'll use this everyday for the rest of your life" whenever the subject of homework or the perennial 'why-do-I-have-to-do-this' came up.  These days I recognize that he was trying to brand math.

One day Todd Smith (not real name) challenged Mr. Ideal with a "Like what?" 

In recollection, Todd was probably a sociopath----one of those antisocial kids whose constant high energy, fearlessness, disregard for rules, willingness to challenge authority, willingness to fight and steal stuff and hustle contraband, and inability to censure himself got him in a lot of trouble with students and faculty alike (and whose incredibly poor hygiene suggested negligent parenting)----and I happen to know that he went a bad way in life.

But on the day in question he had the teacher in a proverbial headlock.

Mr. Ideal said, "Oh, there are so many different jobs."

To which Todd retorted, "Like what?"

"Oh Todd, there are so many I can't even begin to list them."

"Like what?"

"Oh gosh, there are just a whole bunch of them.  So many I can't even count..."  (Shrugging.  Gesturing.)

"So name one."

"Oh there are just so many..."

"Just name one."

"I really couldn't.  There's so many..."

"Just one."

"There are too many..."

And so on.  Obviously this is not verbatim but it is very much the gist.

In hindsight, in addition to recognizing Todd's sociopathy, I now also recognize that Mr. Ideal didn't want to name a career path simply because Todd would have said, "I don't want to do that"; and/or then Mr. Ideal may have had to actually put the mathematics into context (providing he could), to which Todd would have said, "I ain't never gonna ever haff to do that" or something along those lines.

However, I suspect there was also another reason: Mr. Ideal was lying.

I think everyone in the classroom (that was paying attention anyway) caught on. 

There is very little need in life for junior-high-level algebra. Actually, there is very little use for any level of algebra for most of us, almost all us of really.  Nor for geometry.  Nor for trigonometry.  Or number trees.   Imaginary numbers.  Proofs. Etc.  Even if we take into consideration the blue-collar futures of most of my classmates (carpenters and machinists and construction workers and mechanics and factory workers and farm hands all potentially use math), it is doubtful what Mr. Ideal was teaching us would have any direct and practical use in our futures.

I even had a job for a number of years calculating premium overages and shortages---I memorized the formula and tatted it out on a calculator.   Of course, maybe I grasped the math because Mr. Ideal taught me algebra.  Or maybe, since most of this involved simple addition, subtraction, and decimals, I could have gotten by with grade-school level math training.  I will never know.

I can positively say that I have forgotten everything Mr. Ideal taught me.  Literally I've forgotten everything about algebra.
I can also positively say that my life has been more or less successful up to this point without ever having used algebra outside of a classroom setting.  Never used.  Not once.  Even back in junior high I knew I was not destined for blue-collar work or science----I always knew art and language and culture were my callings, even if I didn't know I would make a living off them.  It was instinctive.

Then I began thinking about the little classroom drama above because of some recent posting activity on another thread. I have resented math and the dictum "you'll use this everyday for the rest of your life" since I was a child.  Why was I forced to take that damn class? Math was difficult and embarrassing for me (and I never applied myself in the least, which probably accounts for my perceptions) and privately I celebrated Todd's little victory (pyrrhic on many levels---he was eventually sent to the principal's office; one day he would drop out before high school even; things went cinematically bad for him).  Sure, maybe I am better at problem solving and have a broader understanding of life in general-----but couldn't I have gotten those from a poetry or music theory or art or Latin class, subjects which would eventually relate to my life and career? 

Thing of it is, now I'm of-a-certain-age and I kind of find math...hypothetically interesting; I certainly find layman discussions of physics and astronomy fascinating.  I am alarmed when I see math removed from a curriculum.  And I fully believe in a well-rounded education as the best form of education, even if not everything we are taught directly relates to a practical concern. 

So...what to make of this itinerant recollection...?

Maybe, I wonder, might I have found algebra interesting if I weren't forced lock-step in line to study it at a pace mandated by a state agency?  Maybe I do like math, but the situation and context of my learning turned me away from it?

What is this need, so time-worn, to prove education's worth through job-placement?  Is it simply the cost?

Maybe we shouldn't force people to take classes they don't want to take?  Does browbeating a student into an alien subject lead to humiliation or erudition?

Do we really need math training?

What do we want from our schools anyway?

[mahagonny]

I don't know the answer, but some thoughts...
I had a ninth grade math, algebra teacher that we all loved to hate. Strict, humorless, used old fashioned slogans, dressed in an old fashioned way, everything our brilliant generation had taught each other to ridicule. She drilled us, lectured us, singled out bad actors for scolding, took no prisoners. I scored 100 on the final exam. In the end we did agree she was a great teacher. Sometimes you just can't deny the obvious.
Math is satisfying because things get solved. Whereas now I spend my time teaching students who never really get good enough and then wrack my brain with grading. Wondering if I've really done enough good. Fortunately, some of the former students say I did. But at the time I may have felt like I was giving them a root canal.
What I've forgotten about ninth grade, apparently, is not only the algebra, but how well do can do in life & self image when you apply yourself to a situation where people want a specific exact thing and you know how to give it to them. I should have gone into a field where you use a lot of math.
What I remembered about ninth grade math class I learned from the uppity students: you should question authority and distrust a tyrant. Doesn't always get you far.

The next year the geometry teacher told us the value of geometry extended to other areas. We had to be 'a textbook lawyer' (know the theorem). We were learning the art of logic. And now I know nothing about law or argumentation because I never took those specific courses.. Geometry could have been skipped over. something practical that also used logic could have been studied. Though I guess arguing is only practical when you're a lawyer. The rest of the time, probably a mistake.

[marshwiggle]

Maybe we shouldn't force people to take classes they don't want to take?  Does browbeating a student into an alien subject lead to humiliation or erudition?

Do we really need math training?

What do we want from our schools anyway?

This seems odd, given this:

I was marched through a "box checking process" in basic science for my humanities degree.  I didn't want to take geology 101, but it was the only thing available. 

Did it change my life?  Yes.  It is a small change overall, but it was also profound for my understanding of the world and my appreciation for science.

Would I have been an unsuccessful lump of a human being had not taken geology 101?  No.  But it certainly helped my brain.  And it certainly helped my understanding of the scientific process----so when my consciousness is approached by some scientific controversy, like global warming, how and what I think has definitely been altered for the better.

This cookie cutter / box-checking business is far from perfect, but it works. 

I have a hard time reconciling these.

[Kron3007]

I always liked math and have indeed used it for many things in my career and in my personal life but understand that many don't like it and avoid using it.  However, I did have a similar experience in public school, except it was analyzing poetry etc., Things that I hated and have never used.  Likewise, perhaps it helped me develop reading skills etc, but like you stated with math, there are other ways I could have developed this skill.

So, I guess my point is that people come in all different stripes and you can never develop a program that appeals to everyone so you need a baseline level of various subjects.  In my schooling, as you got further, you could start choosing courses (outside the core requirements).  I chose a lot of math and science, others chose arts etc. 

[polly_mer]

I am of many minds when I read the original post.

1) Yep, many, many, many people hate math because they were marched through it as disconnected from the rest of their lives during K-12.  That's a known problem in education areas I frequent.

2) Algebraic thinking and estimation are the most useful parts of math to daily life.  One might not write the equations, but one is doing something to determine how to spend the grocery money to get enough food to feed one's family.  When money is really tight, people would probably be better off if they ran a bunch of scenarios on how to spend their home budget based on data collected from previous months/years of real spending.  Instead, people tend to rely on wishful thinking instead of applying the useful math to a concrete problem that matters to them. 

No one has to do the math, but individual lives might be better if one collected the data, analyzed the data, and then made decisions based on the data.  All those word problems in Algebra I that "everyone" hates?  Yeah, that's the math that's useful in everyday life to determine how long it will take to get somewhere traveling at constant speed with known interruptions or how to make the trade-offs to optimize the amount of fruit purchased when Steve hates apples and yet apples are cheaper than oranges and we can't afford passion fruit or oranges for all the kids.

3) Failure to really get algebra and the related algorithmic thinking does indeed lock people out of an increasing number of jobs.  Anything that can be programmed is being automated, like all those back office accounting and HR functions.  On a recent Twitter thread filled with physicists and related professors, the question of what job skill is most important to teach students came back with a nearly unanimous "SPREADSHEETS!"  I've been amazed in dealing with even faculty who cannot do any sort of analysis more complicated than putting numbers in a table and graphing as a bar chart.  One doesn't have to be a whiz at geometry or calculus to be able to do enough data analysis to make important decisions based on the numbers, which usually vary greatly from what they were expected to be once one starts asking the important questions.

4)

What I've forgotten about ninth grade, apparently, is not only the algebra, but how well do can do in life & self image when you apply yourself to a situation where people want a specific exact thing and you know how to give it to them. I should have gone into a field where you use a lot of math.

The really, really, really hard part about math outside the classroom is that cranking through the algebra or any math through Calc III that gives one the correct answer is the easy part.  Anything with one right answer is easy--so easy at this point that we have computer programs do it out in the world.  I work with math all day long and I seldom do problems that are easy enough to teach in school because that's not worth my time to my employer. 

My time has to be spend on the hard part of all that math: figuring how to write equations in forms that can be solved, even if "can be solved" really means "add a few hundred lines to the million line computer code and then let the supercomputer crank on it for six months".  Just knowing the math is completely inadequate, because I need to know all the physics, chemistry, and engineering that relies on math as the language.  Someone asserted recently that you can't tell engineers to just "read up on it", but that's exactly how I learned several useful branches of mathematics when it turned out that's the language to tackle those problems at the intersection of chemistry and physics.  Calculus I and II really are equivalent to Foreign Language 101 and 102 for my job.

Those geometric proofs?  One tool to keep in one's back pocket desperately hoping that will reduce a complex problem down to something simpler to tackle with other math tools.

Those trig identities?  Again, a tool that one keeps in one's back pocket to hope it will make that equation that is currently a page long small enough to even think about programming up.

We can't skip those and hope to get all the way through differential equations (the fourth semester math class in college for many people).  People who drop off the math track early probably don't need them, but they are vital to have spent time with to the point that they are as easy to use as a hammer.  I've never written a sonnet in daily life, but I have used geometry and trig to avoid being on a windy roof.

5) If people could only have one math class in high school, then it should be algebra with sufficient computer programming (python is a good modern language that's accessible to "everyone") to let people do the useful spreadsheets for home budgets and statistics they will encounter in the world.  Unlike Mr. Ideal, I tended to keep a lecture in my back pocket about how algebra is useful in the world for when a smart aleck insisted on knowing.  Sure, you can get by without it, but you'll often be late or bizarrely early, likely to waste a lot of money through suboptimal choices, and be easily misled by the statistics in the media because you can't rerun the numbers yourself using different assumptions.

[Volhiker78]

I don't remember much about my junior high math classes except I had a horrendous teacher in 7th grade but luckily got into a good teacher's class for algebra in 8th grade.  I agree with Mahagony that the satisfying thing was knowing there was a solution and trying to figure it out.  Never felt that way about my other classes in junior high.   I eventually took my math interest all the way to college and eventually to grad school.  I shudder to think what would have happened if I hadn't lucked out and gotten my 8th grade teacher.   It would have been hard to recover in high school because it was clear in high school that the better teachers (and classmates) were in the higher level math classes. 

Ideally, it would be nice for middle schools / high schools to have good math teachers at all levels so that students can achieve their math expertise at their own learning rate.  Maybe too much to ask. 

[Aster]

My high school math teacher threw erasers at people who were sleeping.

If that didn't work, he'd stalk over with his squirt bottle for the overhead projector and spray them on the head.

He also drove a bright red Fiero.

Coolest math teacher ever.

[Caracal]

I've used algebra exactly once. I was using someone else's statistics, but there was no table. Basically, he had a percentage and a numerator, but I needed to know the sample size and he didn't give it. I'm not sure I've ever been as excited with my research as when I realized that this was an incredibly basic algebra problem where I needed to solve for X and it worked perfectly.

[Wahoo Redux]

2) Algebraic thinking and estimation are the most useful parts of math to daily life. 

Sure, you can get by without it, but you'll often be late or bizarrely early, likely to waste a lot of money through suboptimal choices, and be easily misled by the statistics in the media because you can't rerun the numbers yourself using different assumptions.

Obviously, Polly, you were on my mind when I typed this out.  And you've kind of made my point and I've kind of made yours.

I can figure travel times and do so frequently.  I can also estimate expenditures.  I can't computer program or do spreadsheets----but I've never tried, never had to, and probably never will; what I do do in life takes virtually all my time.  I've done all the adult things you suggest without algebra (including staying off windy roofs----does one really need math to figure that out?).  So have a great many people, a handful of whom have posted on this board.

Yet now that I am ed-u-ma-cated (as my contractor-sister's-now-ex-father-in-law said because he hated educated people [but was very good at math]) I think I see purpose and value behind learning something I have no practical use for.

What I think I resent is the insistence that to learn something one MUST justify learning it, particularly when that justification is bogus.

We learn stuff.  We are better.  Why pretend otherwise?

[fourhats]

I'm in the humanities. I hated math, and was never good at it. I can do budgets and spreadsheets as part of my job, but otherwise math never made sense to me the way that literature did. I never thought of algebra as a way to get a job.

All that said, the one course that I took in those days that I truly did end up using for the rest of my life was...typing. Like now.

[marshwiggle]

What I think I resent is the insistence that to learn something one MUST justify learning it, particularly when that justification is bogus.

We learn stuff.  We are better.  Why pretend otherwise?

OK, but how do you decide what students MUST take, in high school or after, since there are far more courses available than could be fit into anyone's schedule? (Given that unless a course is taught abysmally, everyone will, in fact, learn something from it.)

[apl68]

My high school math teacher threw erasers at people who were sleeping.

If that didn't work, he'd stalk over with his squirt bottle for the overhead projector and spray them on the head.

He also drove a bright red Fiero.

Coolest math teacher ever.

We had one in junior high who was a football coach.  Not what I'd call a "cool" teacher, but I'll never forget the class where he allowed three guys to come up to the blackboard and attempt to disprove the Pythagorean Theorem.  Two of them were just clowning around and trying to waste time, but the third actually thought it might be possible.  After a bit you could see the light bulb come on over his head when he realized it wasn't possible, just like Coach kept insisting.  HE learned something in that class, at least.

My brother once found the teacher/coach worrying over numbers.  Specifically, 1 and 6.  By season's end it was 1 and 11.

[spork]

[. . . ]

because of some recent posting activity on another thread.

[. . .]

I know the thread of which you speak. It's been difficult trying to keep it from turning into a total train wreck.

[. . .]

people would probably be better off if they ran a bunch of scenarios on how to spend their home budget based on data collected from previous months/years of real spending.  Instead, people tend to rely on wishful thinking instead of applying the useful math to a concrete problem that matters to them. 

[. . .]

the question of what job skill is most important to teach students came back with a nearly unanimous "SPREADSHEETS!" 

[. . .]

Basically knowing how and when to use tools for modelling/forecasting.

While I still remember the joy I experienced when I successfully derived Maxwell's equations, I haven't used them since. I now wish I had far more nuts-and-bolts knowledge of statistics. It would help me with the job-related modelling/forecasting tasks that I now do.

Beyond that, I use basic geometry all the time for home repairs, etc. The kinds of processes that veteran carpenters or plumbers have so much experience with that they can just eyeball and know the answer to because of experience.

I would love to co-teach an undergraduate course on risk management with one of our math faculty -- teach students how to comprehend and generate exceedance probabilities, for example -- since I regularly teach a non-math course on a related subject. I think it's important for people to understand why it's so dumb to buy a house on a flood plain or in a wildfire zone. Or how to judge the effectiveness of different medical treatments.

Edited to add: I got what was a pretty good math education in junior high and high school -- for a rural public school district. Geometry, algebra, trig. In 9th grade I got to take the district's first ever class in programming -- BASIC -- which probably gave me some insight into logic. We didn't have an actual calculus course in high school, and this put me significantly behind when I got to college. Catching up to where I needed to be was very difficult. But since I eventually went in a very different direction, it wasn't something I ever really needed to know for "work" purposes.

In contrast, I've made a career out of something that essentially developed out of a childhood hobby (reading histories). Oddly though I never received formal instruction in some of the skills that I use daily in that capacity -- such as how to decipher the structure of an academic journal article.

[mahagonny]

My high school math teacher threw erasers at people who were sleeping.

If that didn't work, he'd stalk over with his squirt bottle for the overhead projector and spray them on the head.

He also drove a bright red Fiero.

Coolest math teacher ever.

Our math teacher did that. Maybe it was the same guy. I think he got fired for his temper. Then one time we had a two week winter cold snap. Someone was nodding off. He opened all the windows. The temperature was -10 degrees. You never knew. Some days he was jolly. We had a kid named Lou Izzo. The math teacher would sing 'is you is or is you ain't my Izzo.' Next day he would be throwing stuff again. Erasers, hole punches.

[Wahoo Redux]

My high school math teacher threw erasers at people who were sleeping.

If that didn't work, he'd stalk over with his squirt bottle for the overhead projector and spray them on the head.

He also drove a bright red Fiero.

Coolest math teacher ever.

Our math teacher did that. Maybe it was the same guy. I think he got fired for his temper. Then one time we had a two week winter cold snap. Someone was nodding off. He opened all the windows. The temperature was -10 degrees. You never knew. Some days he was jolly. We had a kid named Lou Izzo. The math teacher would sing 'is you is or is you ain't my Izzo.' Next day he would be throwing stuff again. Erasers, hole punches.

Bi-polar.