A recent article in Education Week discussed the hows of teaching math in elementary school. More specifically, the discussion was about the teaching of fractions. The content of the article itself is not what I'm here to comment on. Rather, it was one of the comments (yeah, I know, big surprise):
I'd like to point out that the amount of times I've needed to add or
subtract or multiply or do ANYTHING with fractions in my adult life is
absolutely zero. Never. Never, ever.
I'll ignore the fact that the woman who wrote this post needs a grammar refresher and stick to her overall message.
Never? She's never used fractions in her adult life? So she doesn't cook? Doesn't shop sales? Doesn't tip in restaurants? Doesn't ever use cash (because what are coins but fractions of a dollar)?
This brought to mind an actual conversation I had with an actual person I actually know regarding algebra. The person was attempting to point out to me the folly of having to learn algebra, the ridiculousness of learning to solve for x. According to this person, this is simply not a skill that regular people ever need.
My response: seriously? You're kidding me, right? You've never figured out how much gas you can get with your last $20? Never figured out how many slices of pizza each person in your family gets? Never needed to figure out how many pizzas to buy for your super bowl party? Never calculated how long it will take to get from your house to your grandma's house based on number of miles and approximate speed? Or how much gas you'll need to get to grandma's house?
Every day. Every frickin’ day. And that you don't get that you are essentially solving for x for all of these routine tasks makes me very sad. Because clearly, you missed the actual point of learning it! You missed the actual, overall lesson. And I’m guessing you didn’t do that well in algebra either, because when you miss the point, you kind of suck at those story problems.
And now you go around telling kids in school that algebra is stupid and there’s no reason to ever learn it, and those kids listen to you and so they don’t pay attention and learn the point either and so… and on and on and on it goes…
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