In my experience as an educator, there is a lot of opposition to learning mathematics. Parents (various private conversations, 2000-2015) know that it is a necessary part of a full education but they are often telling me, “I was never very good at math. I don’t expect my kid to do much better.” Some students question the relevance of mathematics in their daily lives. With this barrage of questions, it forces me to answer these questions for myself. If someone were to ask me if it was relevant in my life, I would answer with a resounding yes. I have loved mathematics from the first time it was introduced to me. I found it to be useful, exciting and interesting. I still find it to be all those things at different times. However, my love of mathematics does not convince some students that it is necessary and useful for them.

I am finding that the symbolic value and lessons from mathematics may provide a way in, for helping young people value these ways of thinking and knowing.

Mathematics Education. One may recall this formalism, and here is how it came to me as experienced educator. As an experienced educator, I needed to look outside myself to see why mathematics is so necessary for everyone.  Or to find what parts may be most important, whatever a student does later with their life.

The first and obvious argument is “it is required to get into college programs” (Friedman, 2014) How central are high scores on the SAT or ACT? And at what level do students need to learn it. At one point in my life, I applied to get into pharmacy school. First-year calculus is a required prerequisite. When I asked my counselor about it, she told me that calculus wasn’t used in pharmacy but it was a way to weed out less dedicated students (personal communication, 1995). That is not a very convincing argument for people who are a little scared of math.

Another argument I have heard is that it is a great preparation for working in many occupations including the military or in industry. This is an argument used in federal programs’ documents (No Child left Behind of 2001, 2002, Common Core Standards Initiative, 2010, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, 2009) If this is so, then what parts are central and are we educating students in a way that will last?

This brings up other issues about secondary education in America. It used to be when I was young that secondary education was required to get an industrial job. Now we are using colleges as training grounds for industrial workers and technicians in industries (Mayes, 2007, Zakaria, 2015). Consideration of such arguments and more—including increased student use of cell phones and technology for math applications once done “in one’s head” —led me to think long and hard about why educators in America stress the learning of mathematics to all of its citizens, and at what level and form this should take. Quantitative reasoning is presumably important in general and in life.  But how do we frame this? All of this consideration led me to come up with the following type of speech for my students;

Many math teachers will tell you that you need this for college or for a job. I’m not going take that route (various personal communications). First of all, a very small percentage of high school graduates pursue a degree that involves a large degree of mathematics (U. S. Department of Education, 2011). Therefore, my job is not to turn you into mathematicians. However, mathematics, especially algebra, is about using and manipulating symbols (Lockhart, 2009). That is, to communicate symbolically. Therefore, it is apparent that a mathematics education is about learning to deal with abstract ideas and acting abstractly. Hence, my job is to teach you to master abstract thinking. Along those same lines, science is about learning how the world works, languages are about communicating clearly and history is about learning from the mistakes and accomplishments of humanity. For example, we have many people in this school who have earned PhDs, and probably none of them in mathematics. However, if we asked them to factor a polynomial, most of them probably could not do it. On the other hand, if we asked them to do something that dealt with thinking abstractly, they probably could do it because they do it every day. Therefore, my job is to help you think abstractly because you will use that skill the rest of your life.”

Despite delivering this speech passionately and with full belief of it, there seemed to be still something missing from my inner philosophy. I fully believed in many parts of it but it did not address how to implement such a plan. Besides, it did not involve anything about problem-solving as being one of the cornerstones of mathematical education. The theories of mathematics are great but, if someone cannot solve any problems with these theories, then it is almost useless in our everyday pursuit of our lives (Lockhart, 2009).

This is an excerpt from one of my academic papers. If you want the tile(s) of the references, please feel free to contact me and I will provide them.