On Monday, Inside Higher Ed ran a story about a new report (PDF) calling for less emphasis to be given to calculus in college admissions. The rationale for this is, unsurprisingly, social justice: rich, white, and Asian students are much more likely to take calculus in high school, while poor, Black, and Hispanic students are less likely to even have the option. I was particularly struck, though, by the way the opening paragraphs of the story framed this:
Consider two scenarios:
You are a high school student who lives in the suburbs and excels in mathematics, acing two years of algebra and geometry. When you take Advanced Placement calculus as a senior, you find that all those A’s don’t get you anything. You struggle with calculus and give up on mathematics.
You are a high school senior at an urban high school that doesn’t have much money. You earn A’s in every mathematics course available, but your school doesn’t offer calculus.
Needless to say, there is a third scenario, in which a student excels in mathematics and also in calculus. Taking calculus in high school gives her a head start on her STEM education in college.
The problem is that hundreds of thousands of students believe they will benefit from calculus, and relatively few of them are in that third scenario.
This isn’t wrong, mind, but it’s just a little jarring to find in the context of an academic trade magazine. This kind of nakedly utilitarian curricular argument would never pass muster when applied to, say, arts education— indeed, in many cases saying “Most of these students will never need to use this” is treated as an outrageously offensive claim.
But when the focus shifts from “the humanities” to things on the STEM side of the two-cultures divide, this same line of argument passes unchallenged. It’s perfectly OK to de-emphasize a subject because only STEM majors will directly use it, but questioning whether STEM majors need arts courses they won’t directly use is neoliberalism run amok.
Of course, this isn’t the worst Math Education Take of the past week; that honor goes to Quillette, which attempted to tap into Super Bowl traffic by running a piece with the title “It’s Time to Start Treating High School Math Like Football.” “Like football” in this case means making it entirely optional, because some people just aren’t good at math:
American high schools excel at nurturing football talent. If the future of American economic and military might rested on our country’s ability to produce quality football players, the United States would have nothing to fear from Chinese great-power rivalry. But at the same time, American public schools don’t force anyone to play football. If you’re talented and want to play, there is a strong incentive to do so, since accomplished players get rewarded with social status and gain an advantage in college admissions. But those of us who never play football have other paths to success, and are not considered failures just because we didn’t master the game.
I propose that we treat high-school math like football, whereby we encourage and train those with talent, but neither denigrate nor fret over non-participating students. This approach would not only improve math education for those naturally gifted in the subject but also help to save advanced math programs from the progressive reformers who control the commanding heights of American education.
I hate this so very, very much.
It’s really tempting to just say “All you assholes deserve each other” and walk away from this, but unfortunately they’re doing this “horshoe theory” thing where both extremes converge on the same terrible solution: less math for everyone. Which isn’t good for anyone.
At the end of the day, I’m more on board with the goals of the social-justice side, in that I would like to see the class and race gaps in math education closed up. This means, though, that I end up much more annoyed with them (and in consequence will write more directly about them), because I think the means they’re promoting for reaching those goals are actively harmful. Students in rich schools and from rich families will continue to have access to the resources needed to learn calculus in high school even if it’s de-emphasized, which will put students from poor schools or poor families at even more of a disadvantage than they are now when it comes to majoring in STEM fields. Which will make it even harder to diversify the sciences in the way that we need to going forward.
And yes, you can in principle address this by re-doing curricula, but I don’t think this report, or most of the arguments around the role of math in education really engage with that. Re-doing college STEM curricula to truly not require calculus seems simple from the outside, but doing it in a way that isn’t just watering down the intro courses is really tricky, and leaves you with the problem of what to do with the students who come in knowing calculus already. Re-doing the K-12 curriculum to make statistics the endpoint could be a worthwhile thing to do, and would fix the problem of rich kids knowing calc, but as I wrote back in November, doing it right would be a huge undertaking. I also think you’d end up with many of the same resource equity problems you have now— a high school that can’t find the resources to support a calculus course isn’t going to find it any easier to support an advanced stats course.
Which leaves us with “Well, let’s just make math count less.” Which is accepted in a way that “Let’s make reading count less” wouldn’t be because math antipathy is the one form of anti-intellectualism that’s socially acceptable in educated-elite circles.
(I sort of suspect that accepted anti-intellectualism is one of the real drivers here. That is, a lot of the conversation from the DEI side is dominated by people who don’t like math to begin with, and thus would be perfectly happy to see it dropped. And in a bit of a horseshoe theory recurrance they’re joined by people who do like math, but would be much happier if they didn’t have to try to teach it to people who don’t. Everybody wins, except, you know, the underprivileged students. But that’s unfair to some of the actual people behind the report from the IHE story, who include actual math educators; I believe they’re coming to this from a place of sincerity, but they’re just wrong.)
The right solution here, as I see it, is not to devalue math for the students at the high end, but to lift up the students at the bottom. We should put resources into making sure that every student who wants to has the opportunity to take calculus in high school, not throw up our hands and try to get fewer rich kids to take it.
I’m half tempted to try to put together a satirical anti-“humanities” take arguing against admissions boosts for advanced arts and literature courses on the grounds that STEM nerds don’t need them. This would inevitably be taken seriously by lunatics at both ends of the horseshoe, though, and that goes nowhere good.
Instead, I’ll note a way to frame the argument for pushing students toward advanced math that closely parallels arguments that are commonly used in other highly polarized curricular arguments. That is, you will frequently hear people interested in social justice argue that it is essential to teach historical and literary works that engage with fraught questions of race and gender precisely because they make students (and parents) uncomfortable. They’re exposing students to experiences and points of view that they won’t necessarily find congenial, but engaging with them will broaden their understanding of the world, to the benefit of everyone.
The case for advanced math (and science) education is exactly the same. Math and science are tools for exploring and explaining the world that not every student will find congenial, but grappling with them will lead to a broader understanding. In the same way that it’s valuable for STEM nerds to learn about intersectionality and systemic racism even if they don’t enjoy the experience, it’s valuable for artsy types to step out of their comfort zone and engage with higher math. That willingness to push beyond the comfortable is what’s being rewarded when advanced courses count more heavily in an admissions context.
So that’s this week in “back on my bullshit.” If you find this bullshit congenial, or dislike it but are willing to broaden your experience by reading more of it, here are some buttons:
And the comments will be open.
Thank you. This was really interesting and sparked a couple of thoughts. I've taught math and science in American high schools for 23 years.
1. I think it's so important that high schools offer students a choice between Calculus and Statistics. I wish there were more math courses in high school that are not "about" alegbraic manipulation and equation solving like Algebra 2, Precalculus, and calculus are.
2. I earned a physics degree in college without ever taking a statistics course. I later taught AP Stats for many years. I still feel resentful that no one made me take stats my senior year of high school or first year in college. The class is so important to actually understanding how things work and being an informed citizen.
3. I think there is a similar argument in the humanities where high schools are deciding if Literary Analysis should be the most important aspect to English classes and if AP Literature is the capstone all other English classes should be preparing students for.
I was involved in a Twitter discussion a few days ago where the initial question was along the lines of "What did you learn in school that you never used?" The overwhelmingly popular answer was "algebra" or just "math" in general. I objected (of course I did) and pointed out several ways that at least some math is required that you can't possibly avoid in the modern world. It was nice that I got quite a bit of positive engagement on those tweets, so at least the world isn't populated entirely by philistines.