What if Math is Overrated? (Seriously.)

As my daughter slogs through another fraction problem, I explain it one more time, and she asks me when she’ll use it again. I assure her (read: repeat what other people say) there will be plenty of opportunities to add fractions and she (rightly) reminds me that she will have her calculator/computer/Google to work the problem.

And I tell her something about helping with her thinking skills, which I’ve learned is basically a myth, can be learned other ways, and is still something we repeat to our children because we feel obligated.

The truth is, deep down, even though I make her continue her math book, I think there are more valuable ways she could be spending her time. I really do. (And in fact, math (the meaningful kind) is learned, all the time, without an actual book.) And I think again, about how we keep our children from becoming their best, without realizing it.

“Unlike literature, history, politics and music, math has little relevance to everyday life. That courses such as “Quantitative Reasoning” improve critical thinking is an unsubstantiated myth. All the mathematics one needs in real life can be learned in early years without much fuss.” (emphasis mine) From The Washington Post, by G.V. Ramanathan, professor emeritus of mathematics, statistics and computer science at the University of Illinois at Chicago