Dissing Math

Disrespect for mathematics was the theme of two small items that crossed my (virtual) desk this week. On Wednesday, Randall Munroe's webcomic xkcd.com featured an encounter between an algebra teacher and her former pupil:

"Hey, Miss Lenhart! I forgot everything about algebra the moment I graduated, and in twenty years no one has needed me to solve anything for X! I told you I'd never use it! In your face!"

On Thursday, Linda Gojak, the new president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), posted a similar message on the NCTM President's Corner:

"For too long we have heard the same thing from parents, adults, students, and the general population: 'I was never very good at math!' Too often at parent conferences I heard parents lament about their own inadequacies in mathematics, as though their experiences excused any difficulties that their children were having."

In both items there is an underlying tone that it's OK to dislike, not know, or not use math. John Allen Paulos, in the introduction to his 1989 book Innumeracy, goes further, claiming that many people don't just think it's OK, but take a perverse pride in their negative attitude toward math.

"Unlike other failings which are often hidden, mathematical illiteracy is often flaunted: 'I can't even balance my checkbook.' 'I'm a people person, not a numbers person.' "

Both Paulos and Munroe single out math as being somehow different from other areas of knowledge in this respect. In American culture there is not the sense of shame attached to innumeracy the way there is to illiteracy, for example. Bad grammar is frowned upon; bad probabilistic reasoning is not.

Gojak lists steps that math teachers can take to counter math's negative image: incorporate sense making in lessons; support standards; make connections; share information with parents; work with colleagues to promote a positive image of math in one's community. These are fine as far as they go - which isn't very far, given that she's trying to write an introductory message in a single web page. I look forward to future messages from her.

 I'm especially intrigued by her last suggestion: "Work with your colleagues to promote a positive image of mathematics within your school, district, and community." Exactly how is one to do that? While the other suggestions focus on changing students' attitudes, this one focuses on the outside world in which the student lives, the world that puts different values on different kinds of knowledge and skills, that determines what is shameful and what isn't.

I'm not going to pretend that I have answers, but I do have more questions. I want to understand the problem first.

• What do people dislike about math - is it the content or the techniques and procedures ("solving for X")? Do they find the reasoning unfamiliar or difficult? The lack of relevancy ("I told you I'd never use it!") Or is it just cool to dislike math, or uncool to like it? Is the problem with math's image, or with the image of those who like it?
• Is mathematics exceptional in this respect, as Paulos and Munroe might claim, or is anti-mathematics just a special case of a more general anti-intellectualism found in American culture?
• What do the cognitive sciences have to say about certain aspects of innumeracy, such as the difficulty of dealing with very large or very small quantities, or faulty risk analysis that puts too much emphasis on individual events?

Stay tuned.