Excitement about math adds up
Lori Borgman | Monday, January 05, 2009
While checking out at a drugstore, I saw candy
bars in a basket with a handmade sign that read, "SALE -- 2 for
$1." Underneath that it said, "Reg. 50 cents." Things like that
tend to get me excited, which is a good thing, I now learn.
An international test shows our young people are
making progress in math and science. The key to kids continuing
to make strides, according to an analyst, is for adults to show
excitement themselves for math and science.
I often find myself excited about math and young
people. I was at the grocery store and asked for two-thirds of a
pound of deli meat. A young man behind the counter, who looked to
be about 19, took the meat to the slicer, then asked, "Is two-thirds
.75 or .66?"
"It's .66," I told him. I go in a week later,
and the same young man is working, so I ask for two-thirds of a
pound again, just to see if he's tracking. He walks to the slicer
and again says, "Is that .75 or .66?"
My excitement waned for awhile, and then last
week I made a phone call about a statement from a corporation that
handles credit card sales for retail merchants. The woman on the
phone said that under my new plan, I was charged a 5-cent fee per
transaction.
"But the statement says .5," I said. "That's not
5 cents, that's 50 cents."
"No, it's not," she said. "Five cents is 0.5."
"No, five cents would be .05," I replied.
I told her to look at the line where there were three charges for
.5 and follow it out. "Look," I said, "they total $1.50. Three 5-cent
charges would total 15 cents. Three 50-cent charges make $1.50."
Exasperated, she put me on hold to no doubt check
with her manager as to whether three 5s made 15 or 150.
Was I excited about math? I was coming-through-the-phone
excited.
For years, other countries beat the decimal points
out of our kids in math. The analyst that said we need some excitement
for subjects like math and science was right. Kids don’t need to
hear that a parent wasn’t good at math in school, or still shakes
at the sight of a geometry book.
Kids need to hear that math is essential, doable
and enjoyable. They need to hear that we expect them to go far --
to master material that wasn’t even invented when we were in school.
If a kid exceeds a parent’s math and science abilities and needs
help, ask for help from a family member or a neighbor. Or use that
phone-a-friend card.
Kids need math and science to function at the
drug store and the grocery store. They also need it to pioneer
new frontiers in space, technology and medicine. Football and basketball
are great, but a 3-point field goal never cured a disease.
It’s in all of our best interest to build excitement
for math and science, because when kids don't succeed at these subjects
and enter the workforce, well, it leaves us with an excitement of
a different nature.
