evolution

Q: What do you call someone in math class doing the crossword and fiddling with an iPod instead of paying attention?

A: A journalist.

Meet Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, who thinks kids shouldn’t have to take that darned old math. It’s just too… hard:

Last year, she dropped out of the 12th grade at Birmingham High School in Los Angeles after failing algebra six times in six semesters, trying it a seventh time and finally just despairing over ever getting it. So, according to the Los Angeles Times, she “gathered her textbooks, dropped them at the campus book room and, without telling a soul, vanished from Birmingham High School.”

Gabriela, this is Richard: There’s life after algebra.

In truth, I don’t know what to tell Gabriela. The L.A. school district now requires all students to pass a year of algebra and a year of geometry in order to graduate. This is something new for Los Angeles (although 17 states require it) and it is the sort of vaunted education reform that is supposed to close the science and math gap and make the U.S. more competitive. All it seems to do, though, is ruin the lives of countless kids. In L.A., more kids drop out of school on account of algebra than any other subject. I can hardly blame them.

I confess to be one of those people who hate math. I can do my basic arithmetic all right (although not percentages) but I flunked algebra (once), barely passed it the second time — the only proof I’ve ever seen of divine intervention — somehow passed geometry and resolved, with a grateful exhale of breath, that I would never go near math again. I let others go on to intermediate algebra and trigonometry while I busied myself learning how to type. In due course, this came to be the way I made my living. Typing: Best class I ever took.

The fact that Mr. Cohen cannot — by his own admission — “do percentages” explains a lot to me about the state of journalism today.

Here’s the one that cracks me up, though. Not only did Mr. Cohen didn’t pay attention in math class, he didn’t pay attention in any of his other classes either:

Here’s the thing, Gabriela: You will never need to know algebra. I have never once used it and never once even rued that I could not use it. You will never need to know — never mind want to know — how many boys it will take to mow a lawn if one of them quits halfway and two more show up later — or something like that. Most of math can now be done by a computer or a calculator. On the other hand, no computer can write a column or even a thank-you note — or reason even a little bit. If, say, the school asked you for another year of English or, God forbid, history, so that you actually had to know something about your world, I would be on its side. But algebra? Please.

The statement I bolded betrays even the simplest understanding of mathematics, and it unfortunately also betrays the attitude of many people toward many topics in education, shared by even some educators: “It’s so hard. Why do we have to learn it?”

Years from now, when journalists like Mr. Cohen turn their ill-informed potshots and poorly-developed reasoning skills toward the leadership in the superpowers India and China from the comfort of a declining second-rate Western power called the United States of… Something or Other, we need only look here to see the answer.

The magazine Scientific American owns and operates a blog now, and one of its bloggers, Gary Stix, takes Cohen out for a richly- deserved spanking, citing a study that appeared not 24 hours after Cohen’s column came out:

As a fan of history, Cohen should be familiar with the Biblical phrase “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” A day after his column appeared, the National Academy of Sciences issued a survey of 200 multi-national corporations that indicated that 38 percent were planning to shift an increasing amount of their research to countries like India and China that maintain solid educational systems. Surprisingly, the report concluded, lower labor costs were not the major factor in making these decisions. Instead, their plans were triggered by the availability of high-quality educational institutions and the resulting pool of scientists and engineers.

No one in Hyderabad or Shenzen is calling for getting rid of secondary algebra requirements.

Why? The math is simple:

No algebra=No calculus=No science=No technology=We’re totally *&$#FRTDG!!!!!

Well said.

And it’s too bad Mr. Cohen couldn’t have gotten a computer to help him write his column. It might have been better.

MORE: Mark Coffey of Decision ‘08 (a Raging RINO blog): “I kept looking for a hint that this was a put-on, but it just isn’t there…”

PZ Myers calls Cohen an “advocate for ignorance” and totally destroys the article. Ouch.

Cole (another Raging RINO) defends Cohen a bit: “I am not going to excuse Cohen’s glorification of ignorance, if you will, but I do not think that was the real point of the column. The point of the column is that should someone be condemned to a life of, well, diminished earnings and expectations, simply because they are incapable of performing algebra?” John brings up some good points, but I think misses the overall picture. I didn’t detect any of the points Cole brought up in Cohen’s piece at all. Cohen’s message was “too hard? Do something else; it’ll be okay.” Cohen’s student failed algebra six times. Provided she was doing well in her other classes, that is evidence of some other problem besides lack of talent. Of all the solutions for that problem, Cohen chose the stupidest: to not require anyone to take any mathematics — which, although without saying so, is essentially what he [Cohen, not Cole] did.

Matt Yglesias: “Sadly, Cohen is more-or-less correct to say that an inability to grasp these kinds of mathematical concepts does not, in practice, seem to impede one’s career as a political journalist in contemporary America. But that says a lot more about the poor state of journalism than it does about the value of algebra.”

Outside the Beltway’s James Joyner: “English and mathematics are the two essential languages of [American] education. One is simply not educated without a solid foundation in both.”

UPDATE 2: John Cole comes back in his post I linked earlier with this nugget (which looks like a description of one of my own high school classes) — The student cited by Cohen could only be bothered to attend a third of her classes:

Her teacher, George Seidel, devoted a class this fall to reviewing equations with a single variable, such as x — 1 = 36. It’s the type of lesson students were supposed to have mastered in fourth grade.

Only seven of 39 students brought their textbooks. Several had no paper or pencils. One sat for the entire period with his backpack on his shoulders, tapping his desk with a finger.

Another doodled an eagle in red ink in his notebook. Others gossiped as Seidel, a second-year teacher, jotted problems on the front board.

“Settle down,” Seidel told the fifth-period students a few minutes after the bell rang. “It doesn’t work if you guys are trying to talk while I’m trying to talk.”

Seidel once brokered multimillion-dollar business deals but left a 25-year law career, hoping to find a more fulfilling job and satisfy an old desire to teach. Nothing, however, prepared him for period five.

“I got through a year of Vietnam,” he said, “so I tell myself every day I can get through 53 minutes of fifth period…. I don’t know if I am making a difference with a single kid.”

Seidel did not appear to make a difference with Gabriela Ocampo. She failed his class in the fall of 2004 — her sixth and final semester of Fs in algebra.

But Gabriela didn’t give Seidel much of a chance; she skipped 62 of 93 days that semester.

Looks like Richard Cohen isn’t very good at journalism either.

UPDATE 3: Josh:

…a numerically literate society is one where citizens can make an assessment of the meaning of a number independent of the text someone typed about it. If I can use some algebra and estimation, I can check that the numbers match up with what I know of reality, and I’ll avoid stupid errors. I won’t parrot liberal numbers that support my position, because I’ll see they’re dishonest, and I can pick apart conservative lies, or acknowledge valid mathematical claims from either side. I can decide for myself. If I’m mathematically illiterate, I’m stuck trusting someone else. It’s as debilitating as the inability to read, but harder to detect. I don’t think the illiterate have an inherent right to a high school diploma.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 17th, 2006 at 12:14 and is filed under education, mathematics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.