Chapter 58.314159: Good Math

Recently, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer posted a commentary calling for a commitment to emphasizing math in the schools. This call is certainly necessary, and long overdue. However, my pessimism may be getting the better of me. I'm not sure we can expect much. As the commentary states, we need better professional development of teachers, with a goal of training them to be more confident in their role. This takes time. No time like the present to start, but I think what we need to do is get math into more subjects; find where math fits into the history class, perhaps. Or make the examples in math class more accessible to kids: you have 500 songs on your iPod, what percentage of the memory is still available for more songs?

I'm not convinced the math block for many students is due to the subject matter. I think a big part of the problem is that math isn't cool. Maybe each student can have a team in a free fantasy league; each kid must keep their team under a salary cap. Work the numbers.

Easy for me to say -- I'm not teaching. Students who are bored are potentially disruptive, and one of the major challenges for education is classroom management. It takes more than teachers who are confident in their abilities to teach math, it takes teachers who are enthusiastic about teaching -- period. That involves a strong educational environment, a supportive administration, etc.

I'm all for emphasizing math, and I agree with Seattle -- home of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation -- being at the vanguard of a movement. But this will be a long slog, and the kids will need to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Kids don't implicitly care that the United States' position as an economic leader is imperiled without better math, science, and engineering education. They want to know what it means to them. Once that's been solved, you'll find more eager children.