Born To Math
“We learned more from a three-minute record than we ever did in school” suggests a singer/songwriter who—his derisive account of his formal schooling notwithstanding--somehow acquired the requisite skills to perform in concert halls and stadiums over 3000 times spanning the past half century and amass a net worth somewhere north of a billion dollars.
Which is not to suggest that dropping out of Ocean County College is a recommendation for producing wealth, stardom, and shrieking adoration from countless minions of an evening, only that being admitted to a highly rejective university isn’t necessarily an inevitable path to success either.
Bruce Springsteen’s perfectionism—six solid months in the studio to produce “Born to Run”*—cannot be directly attributed to his modest academic performance. Nor can his depression, about which he has been transparent. That no two facets of personality or achievement can be perfectly correlated is a subject of (many of) my previous essays. Good athletes are sometimes poor students and sometimes not. High achieving scholars are sometimes helpful to their less gifted classmates but not always. Kids who drop out of community college sometimes go on to perform all over the planet and accumulate a thousand million dollars. But I’m not thereby going to head over the campus of my local community college asking each disgruntled person who slouches by if they want to sign a record contract.
Instead, I’m going to ask specifically about one particular curricular choice, the quadratic formula. As you may remember… oh, never mind. You probably don’t remember. Indeed, if you don’t have the foggiest recollection of the quadratic formula, my explaining it here is more likely to induce mild trauma rather than a pleasant response of, “oh, yeah, that.” And if you are intimately acquainted with the quadratic formula, my reproducing it here won’t necessarily bring you collateral joy.
I’m just asking, how has your life piddled along with or without a thorough understanding of the quadratic formula specifically or algebra II topics generally. (Logarithms, conic sections, trigonometric identities, complex numbers.)
I’m guessing that those of my gentle readers who don’t know the quadratic formula from Adam’s housecat are living the same lives that they would have otherwise. Those of you who are familiar with the quadratic formula—having gone on to study more mathematics, engineering, or medicine—don’t use the quadratic formula from one decade to the next.
For context, my dad tried to teach me the quadratic formula in 1969. My dad’s patience was legendary but not entirely without limits. I was not making progress. More exactly, I thought my head was going to detach itself from my neck, speed off into the stratosphere, and explode harmlessly. Desperate to end the lesson, I despairingly asked my dad, “I don’t get this, I hate this, when will I ever use this?”
To which he serenely replied, “you have to learn this so that you can teach it to your son.”
Which admittedly makes more sense now that my children and I have all had the same conversation.
But learning something just so you can pass it along to subsequent tortured generations doesn’t seem like a completely satisfactory reason, does it? Returning to curricular choices more broadly, why is it that so many children are so unmoved bordering on thoroughly unaffected by their educations? Why is it that you remember so little of what you spent years “learning”? (Reach out to me privately if you have a thorough understanding of the difference between mitosis and meiosis; how a bill becomes a law; and the quadratic formula.) Because our kids don’t have any input into what they learn, how they learn it, or when? “Electives” are not a thing for the first several years or your child’s schooling and then “music or drama” having replaced “home economics or shop” are the only possibilities.
I’m in favor of math. I love math. Anyone who has read more than a few of these 790 essays knows that I spend my free time watching math videos and chatting with a buddy of mine about math problems that bring us more enjoyment than frustration. I just wonder: for those of you who get no pleasure from higher math why you had to put up with it. If you’re not going to use it, you’re not going to take any more courses, you’re not going to remember it.
Does your favorite rock star know math? What about your least favorite president? Does your accountant know the quadratic formula? What about your librarian? Do the people you respect the most know math? What about the folks whom you like the least? Were any of these folks forced to take math? Should they have been?
I know that allowing students to opt out of curricular choices they find execrable is a controversial idea, especially coming from an author whose wife has to frequently remind him, “no, you can’t stop strangers on the street and ask them if they would like to see a math trick.” I’m just wondering if our children’s time could be better spent elsewhere—learning that which might be more useful, meaningful, enjoyable.
I await incoming. Please add your thoughts to the conversation that Evie, Lynn, Mike, and I have started below.
* Just the one song, not the album of the same name.