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.
