ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Is Algebra Necessary? Call me crazy, but I don’t think the problem with America’s public schools is that they’re teaching too much math. But I think there’s a desperate shortage of even competent math teachers. I never liked math until I started using it in science classes, not just studying it in (usually) badly taught math classes. To be fair, that’s not entirely inconsistent with the thrust of this piece.
UPDATE: A reader emails: “Amen to this. This was me, too. (And I was good at math.) It’s the difference between learning a dead language and learning French through immersion in Paris. We NEED math to do science well and the data we scientists churn out now is so voluminous and complex that we need really good mathematicians to correctly interpret its significance.”
If only there were a way to learn math that was the equivalent of having a French girlfriend.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Brian Erst writes: “Just make the coming generation of fembots user-programmable in a way that requires good math and logic skills. You will very quickly have a generation of mathematical and programming geniuses.”
MORE: A reader sends this suggestion, but I think the fembots would be far more effective.