Weapon of Math Destruction

It was while I was listening to the Tom Lehrer song "New Math" it struck me that I'm not the only person who sucks at math, and it's not entirely the individuals fault.

Now, for an engineer to say he sucks at math may come to a fright, but a look back into my K-12 and beyond mathematics came to an interesting discovery which many Americans born after 1950 can associate with in some way shape or form.

Starting back in 1992 in Hartland, Michigan which is *points at his hand* there, I started my foray into elementary mathematics. Or as people used to call it: arithmetic. The simple stuff. What is 2+4? What is 9÷3? What is 7x8? Something that most elementary students encountered thousands of times a day across the country. Each question had a specific answer. Six, two, and fifty-six respectively.

Even going into upper elementary school, that odd year the school district decided to shift everyone around, we lead into algebra. Discovering what a function y=x looks like, and how to solve 2x+3=x-1 and basic equations like that.

Then something changed in Middle School. The days of going to a 40 year old building were gone. Hell, the days of basic math were gone too, but something was different about this, and it came in the form of a Michigan Education Association/Michigan Department of Education letter. This letter was sent to parents to inform their child was going to be in a pilot program in learning a new style of math as a part of a study of the NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) standards. It didn't take in all students, but a decent chunk. With this, would come a new textbook series which was extremely similar to the now infamous "Focus on Algebra"after it was strongly shamed by Sen. Robert Byrd

There were two massive issues with this change.
     1: It relied on students having the books from the start, not jumping into a program.
     2: The books were horrible.

And I don't mean horrible like the "Twilight" series, but pretty close.

These books were a nightmare from day one. Unlike any book I had in my entire K-12 career was that it was paper back. Yeah, that's brilliant. Trust a bunch of twelve year olds with paper back books. Wait, what? The school didn't get enough so we have to share the books with the other classes by leaving them in the classroom? So about that homework that we're not doing out of the book.

And that was only the start. Aside from the numerous grammatical errors, the questions had no bearing on math. What do my feelings about what qualifies a species as endangered have anything to do with the quadratic equation? (Which I didn't learn until college, and I'll get into later). And even worse, due to not having a textbook at home and this being considered "New Math: The Sequel" by my parents who didn't understand it, doing homework was frustrating and often resulted in someone crying.

After two years, I believe the program was considered a failure, as my brother who was going into 7th grade as I was going into high school was going back to using the textbooks they had put into storage.

So, September 2001. A freshman in high school, and just like everyone else, required to take a math placement test. Myself, just like everyone else who took the State of Michigan's pilot program scored just barely over a 6th grade level which warranted us a minimum of two-years in Core-Plus Math. Formerly "Conceptual Mathematics", Core-Plus carried on a similar presentation to what I got in 7th and 8th grade, but a bit more math intense. "Bit" being the key word there.

While I knew I would need to know math outside of high school, I stuck in the math program for all four years of high school, and for some reason I still remember the '97 Mitsubishi Diamante MSRP was $26,995. The book used that as a reference in the problems a LOT.

Now here's the issue: By the time my senior year rolled around, I had pulled C's and B's in math all 24 marking periods of my high school career. I thought I was doing good until I took my college math placement test and got put into elementary algebra. That's right. The math class I would have had in my freshman year had I not been stuck with the failure program in middle school.

As a side note, Andover High School and Lasher High School (about 40 mins away from Hartland) had been using Core-Plus math only 2 years before Hartland. A professor at Western Michigan Univ. surveyed many students who went through the Core Plus program to end up being placed in remedial math classes in college, and drastically behind their peers who were in traditional math.

So now college. A place where Core-Plus math and shitty State pilot programs don't exist. And I have no clue what the hell I'm doing. And it wasn't until my 2nd attempt of Calculus III that I realized I still have no clue what any of this means other than letters on a chalkboard which I will never use professionally. (Or at least I don't think I will - I still can't get an answer from a professor on when this will actually be applicable.)

Going from one extreme to another is about the worst thing that anyone in an educational facility can do for someone who went through an "alternative" mathematics program.

So, to Hartland Consolidated Schools, the State of Michigan, Oakland University, and all those "professionals" who worked on this New-New Math... Thank you for repelling more people from math. And on a more personal note: Fuck you guys! As former Director of the Office of Management and Budget said: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." You guys have successfully lost me out of math. For the sake of all children, go back to traditional mathematics for all grades. Do not attempt to change it, and for the love of God, learn from your lessons. We do not need to hear about a New Math 3.0 in the schools.