The question is the bane of the math teacher’s existence.
It probably comes up in other classes as well, but it seems to be particularly associated with mathematics.
Here are two truths (and no lies): From the time I graduated from high school in 1985 to the time I started training to be a math teacher in 2011 (including my four years in college as a math major), I don’t remember thinking about the Quadratic Formula. And the moment I started in classes in 2011, it came flooding back to me as a mental tsunami.
Hardly anyone will ever use the Quadratic Formula. “Some people, some fields, what if you become a … yada yada yada.”
Even a lot of mathematicians don’t need it.
So… why teach it?
This is NOT going to be a rant on how we shouldn’t teach it. Teaching it is fine. Learning it is fine. The problem is: How we teach it, and how we teach math in general.
This is also not going to be another rant about the way in which we math teachers vampirically suck all the joy out of mathematics and then try to feed the exsanguinated corpse to unwitting and unwilling children.
At least, it’s not going to be a direct rant on that.
Well, maybe a little.
A student asked a different question this week: “Do you do math for fun, outside of class?”
It wasn’t a general question, it was specifically about me. And it was asked in the sort of way that rode the razor’s edge between genuine curiosity and the veiled conviction that there was something seriously wrong with me.
More on the former side of that edge, at least. Still, the idea that someone could enjoy math is such a foreign concept to many people, student and otherwise.
I’ve long wrestled with this.
Most ELA teachers read outside of class, for their own enjoyment. Most social studies teachers engage in current events or history or such outside of class, for their own enjoyment. Most science teachers likewise engage in the favorite parts of their fields outside of class.
Most math teachers?
Not so much, as near as I can tell. Maybe a little. Even a lot of math teachers see mathematics as a utilitarian fuddy-duddery that sparks little to no joy.
So anyway.
What I’ve been hearing from students, taken as a summary over years of teaching, is that education is best when it’s fun and useful. If it can’t be both, let it as least be one.
This week, I realized that’s a huge part of the motivation of the question in the title: This is boring. This is not fun. Tell me it’ll at least be useful.
Today a student added another layer: Make it, at the very least, coherent.
This is math class for so many students: Boring, incoherent, and pointless.
Where’s my cell phone? TikTok MUST be better than this.
This is not mathematics.
This is the exsanguinated corpse of what used to be mathematics.
True: There are parts of mathematics that are as exciting as an accounting seminar, but as useful as one, too. So yes, there are absolutely boringly pragmatic portions of mathematics.
Not the quadratic formula, though.
There are parts of mathematics that are downright exciting. Desmos recently released a 3D graphing calculator: Now I can graph the complex part of polynomials!
That only sounds boring if you’ve never really hugged the complex part of a polynomial’s graph. (There will be a post on this when I get around to it.)
Graphs of polynomials are so much cooler in 3D.
Yes, I told the student that I do indeed do math for fun. He asked me if I saw mathematics like in those memes with numbers and letters all floating around in a mental soup.
Yes, that’s it exactly. Like a fever dream of swirling smoke. It’s hard to imagine, and harder to describe, to someone who’s never experienced it.
Quadratic functions can be exciting. There was, after all, a once-vivacious living creature that we sucked all of the blood out of. Quadratic functions literally represented the tipping point of mathematics from being a wandering mess of geometric natterings to… ALGEBRA.
Algebra wrested the focal significance from geometry through Quadratics.
But now.
Memorize this impenetrable formula, or use the impenetrable technique called “completing the square”.
Dine on the corpse.
What’s the matter, kids, aren’t you hungry?
Fun, useful, and coherent.
Pick at least one.
Because right now, for far too many students, mathematics is none of the above.