What's Math got to do with It ?

"What's Math got to do with It?" by Jo Boaler, 2008

Helping children learn to LOVE their least favorite subject -- and why it's important for America.

Jo Boaler is the Marie Curie Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Sussex in England. She was previously a professor at Stanford.


Introduction

In 2005, an AP news poll showed that a staggering 4 out of 10 adults said they HATED math in school.
Twice as many people hated math as any other subject.

Yet the advent of new technologies means that ALL adults now need to be able to reason mathematically in order to work and live in today’s society.

This aversion to math is reflected in our popular culture as well:

- In an episode of The Simpsons, Bart returns his math textbook at the end of the year, noting that it is in perfect shape, “still in its original wrapping !!”

- Barbie’s first words were “Math class is tough”

(manny adds – I hear it all the time in TV shows and movies….I have even heard school counselors tell the students that math was their worse subject)

Mathematical know-how is not only one of the most important qualities for workers to possess in the future, it is critical to successful functioning in life.

“Today’s news is not only grounded in quantitative issues (budgets, profits, inflation, global climate change, weather probabilities) but it is also grounded in mathematical language (graphs, percentages, charts).”

21th century citizens need mathematics.

But the mathematics that people need is NOT the sort of math learned in most classrooms.

If young people are to become powerful citizens with full control over their lives, then they need to be able to reason mathematically – to think logically, compare numbers, analyze evidence, and reason with numbers.

Mathematics classrooms need to catch up – not only to help future employers and employees, or even to give students a taste of authentic mathematics, but to prepare young people for their lives.

“Traditional K-12 mathematics curriculum, with its focus on performing computational manipulations, is UNLIKELY to prepare students for the problem-solving demands of the high-tech workplace.”

What’s Math Got to do with It ? IT is a lot to do with children having low self-esteem as they are made to feel bad in math classes; it also has a lot to do with children not enjoying school as they are made to sit through uninspiring lessons and it has a lot to do with the future of the country, given that we urgently need many more mathematical people to help with jobs in science, medicine, technology, and other fields.

Children need to solve complex problems, to ask many forms of questions, and to use, adapt, and apply standard methods, as well as to make connections between methods and to reason mathematically – and they can engage in such methods at home and at school.