Is math the worst? (and if it is, whose fault is it?)

.

A student asked me on the AP Lit discord:

 hey mr jepson, do you think the study of literature has any of these problems?

.

I wrote kind of a lot (for discord) in response, so I thought I’d share it with a second audience:

Hoo. I have a LOT to say about this.

For one, when you’re in the academy, no matter your field, you’re reaching levels of specialization no one else has reached. That’s literally what’s meant by a PhD in the 21st century.

But as lonely as specialization can be, I suspect he’s right that it’s a bit worse in math.

But! It’s also true that that’s part of what attracts people to pure math in the first place. To think a thought no one has every thought before? That’s oxygen, baby.

HOWEVER, in the old days of pure math, you could theorize brilliant things and then the next generation(s) of students would make the proofs. That’s not how it works anymore.

Now the genius work and the grunt work have to be done by the same person.

Is that better or worse? I don’t know.

I also agree that a lot of math teaching is all about memorizing crap and not actually understanding math.

We’re trying to get you to pass tests, not to really truly do math.

He mentioned this but the name of measurements replacing the goal has a fun name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart’s_law

This drives me CRAZY in education. So much of what we do is stupid testing in order to give you grades and I hate it.

I wasn’t joking when I said that I’ve observed that the essais* do more to make you (my students) better writers than just about anything else I do. The only things that might do more is when I get to sit down wit someone at lunch and work one-on-one with them on their writing. Even then, you’ll learn more if we, say, go over your college-application essays than, say, your Two Gentlemen essays.

Most of the “school” stuff we do is not where you will do most of your learning.

But most English teachers get trapped in the same morass that math teachers do: teaching little tricks and techniques so we can test you and show you “learned” something rather than helping you find the joy or writing or mathing.

How terrible! The joy of the subject matter should be our main goal!

But how do I grade joy? Can’t do it. So 60% of our grade is stuff that thrown against some rubric the College Board tested over a decade and says is proof you’re smart.

Such a dumb system.

So, to get back to your question, @[asker], sadly, it is worse in math. But that because even with back English classes, there’s a better chance people will escape into adulthood with a love of story and sound than with a love of sum and superset.

Which is a tragedy because every single person should be able to enjoy the beauty and pleasure of a nice piece of math, same as they can with a nice piece of Robert Frost.

(If you’re one of the people who’s feels you can’t enjoy math, I think these books are a lovely reintroduction to what makes math fun and pretty. Ironic, given the state of the drawings. Here’s book one: https://bookshop.org/a/8076/9780316509046)

(Or at the library: https://ccclib.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S154C1765792)

.

* essai — The essai (pronounced incorrectly) is an assignment I give almost every week. (We write every week but sometimes it’s an AP-style essay.) It’s inspired by Montaigne and his original concept of just trying stuff out. Writing without too much worry worry about what you’re doing. Here’s the assignment. Write for forty minutes without stopping. You do that, you get 100%. I give a prompt but you don’t have to follow it. But my prompts are so interesting you’re genuinely interested to discover what you’re going to write. Students are, on average, more proud of their essais than of anything else. And they write amazing things. They are easily the best reading I get to do as part of my job. Granted, these are advanced students on the cusp of adulthood but imagine how other students could do who haven’t been bullied into believing crap like the five-paragraph essay is “writing.”