"I've emphasized the importance of both math literacy and math excellence in my article Is This How To Fix Our Math Education? However, I've come to realize that we probably need a critical mass of the American population to be math literate precisely so that America as a whole will really begin to support math excellence.
It is socially acceptable to be bad at math in our country. Perhaps it wasn't always this way. And perhaps it doesn't have to be this way. I think that the first step we need to take as a society is to make it socially unacceptable to be bad at math just like it's socially unacceptable to be bad at reading.
And perhaps one litmus test of this is the following scenario. We are watching the popular show Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? and the topic is basic geometry. Let's say the grown contestant has to peek at the answer of the fifth grader standing next to him. When we don't find it funny, maybe then it means as a society we've started to value the importance of being math literate."
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It is socially acceptable to be bad at math in our country. Perhaps it wasn't always this way. And perhaps it doesn't have to be this way. I think that the first step we need to take as a society is to make it socially unacceptable to be bad at math just like it's socially unacceptable to be bad at reading.
And perhaps one litmus test of this is the following scenario. We are watching the popular show Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? and the topic is basic geometry. Let's say the grown contestant has to peek at the answer of the fifth grader standing next to him. When we don't find it funny, maybe then it means as a society we've started to value the importance of being math literate."
- More Here
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