If columnist A writes something incredibly dumb on Tuesday, and Blogger B calls him on it on Wednesday...

The Washington Post's Richard Cohen has advised high school students everywhere that algebra is a waste of their time.

You're never going to have to solve an algebra problem again in your life, he says, unless of course you do something foolish with yourself and become a scientist or a mathematician or something useless like that, instead of pursuing the higher calling of Washington Post columnist.  And if life does surprise you some time and throw a problem your way that requires algebra to solve, well, don't worry, that's what computers and calculators are for.

No, that's what androids like Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation are for.

Data is conscious, he can reason on his own, and he can self-direct.  He can recognize a problem as it develops and solve it without Picard having to tell him, Make it so.

Computers and calculators have to be told what to do.  And if you can't recognize an algebra problem when faced with it, if you can't translate a problem into an algebraic equation yourself, how do you instruct the computer?  What numbers do you punch into your calculator and in what order?  Which function keys are you going to press?

If you haven't studied algebra how do you even know that the problem in front of you can be solved by doing some algebra?

But here's the flip side: If you have studied algebra and internalized its logic, there's a very real possibility that you are doing algebra all the time without even knowing that's what you're doing.  Of course it would be of a rudimentary sort.  But just because you don't see all the x's and y's and z's over a's and a's divided by b's in your head, doesn't mean that you haven't reasoned that problem through in an essentially mathematical way.

Doesn't mean that you're like the poet who doesn't know it either and are an unconcious mathematical genius.  I'm just saying that the things we learn when we are young have a habit of being useful later in life even though we don't necessarily remember when, where, how, and if we learned them.  And that's the argument for a liberal education, for learning as much about every subject as we can get our heads around. At 14, 16, 18, 22, 30, we don't know if we're ever going to need to know history, geography, art history, algebra, or organic chemistry. We don't know if we're ever going to need to be able to bake a cake or repair a computer.  We can guess that some things are more likely to come up than others, but we don't know.

The purpose of an education is to expand the mind and soul in preparation for whatever the future brings.

Cohen, a supposedly educated man, is arguing for a purely vocational education system.

PZ Myers is appalled by Cohen's column, as both a scientist and college professor, of course.

Algebra is not about calculating the answer to basic word problems: it's about symbolic reasoning, the ability to manipulate values by a set of logical rules. It's basic stuff—I know many students struggle with it, but it's a minimal foundation for understanding mathematics and everything in science. Even more plainly, it's a basic requirement for getting into a good college...

Because Cohen's column is framed as a letter to a specific young woman, Myers is also appalled as a Liberal with strong feminist principles:

Because Richard Cohen is ignorant of elementary mathematics, he can smugly tell a young lady to throw away any chance being a scientist, a technician, a teacher, an accountant; any possibility of contributing to science and technology, of even being able to grasp what she's doing beyond pushing buttons. It's Richard Cohen condescendingly telling someone, "You're as stupid as I am; give up."

But finally it's as a humanist that Myers is most outraged.  Cohen writes, "I have lived a pretty full life and never, ever used—or wanted to use—algebra."  And Myers replies:

If sheep could talk, they'd say the same thing.

Yeah, a person can live a good, bland life without knowing much: eat, watch a little TV, fornicate now and then, bleat out opinions that the other contented consumers will praise. It's so easy.

Or we could push a little bit, stretch our minds, challenge ourselves intellectually, learn something new every day. We ought to expect that our public schools would give kids the basic tools to go on and learn more—skills in reading and writing, a general knowledge of their history and culture, an introduction to the sciences, and yes, mathematics as a foundation. Algebra isn't asking much. It's knowledge that will get kids beyond a future of stocking shelves at WalMart or pecking out foolish screeds on a typewriter.

We're supposed to be living in a country built on Enlightenment values, founded by people who knew the importance of a well-rounded education...

In Richard Cohen we have a 21st century man insisting that an 18th century education is too much for our poor students.

I think Cohen would probably defend himself by saying that he was only trying to point out that people have different skills and talents and there are plenty of ways for a person to make a living besides as a scientist or mathematician.  Atrios makes a similar point here.

The difference between Cohen and Atrios is that Atrios is pointing out a fact of life, while Cohen seems to have internalized the purely utilitarian approach to education:  You go to school for job training. If you don't see any immediate prospect that studying a particular subject is going to lead to a paycheck, don't bother with it.  Cohen is the English major version of all those business majors who can't fathom why they have to read Shakespeare.  "Why do we need to know how to write well?  Isn't that what PR flunkeys are for?"

It's not surprising that people who have devoted their lives to making a buck, judge everything by its dollar value.  But it's dismaying that so many people like Cohen, who have supposedly devoted their lives to loftier ambitions, accept the idea that education is most important as career training, including a great many educators.

This comes out every time "Boys are in trouble" or "Girls are in trouble" issue arises in the Media---it was on display recently in this Newsweek cover story.

For over 200 years, from when the Pilgrims landed until sometime after the Civil War, schooling was just about useless to the future careers of most students because they were going to grow up to be farmers or laborers.  But their parents still sent them off to school.

Times have changed.  As Atrios points out, a higher education isn't truly necessary for many jobs that you can't get without a diploma of one sort or another.  But people don't see that.  What they see is: Diploma=good job.  Diplomas are given out by schools.  Therefore, since if A=C, and B=C, A=B, then school=good job.

Cross-posted at Ezra Klein's place.

Comments

[PZ Myers]

I agree that many people aren't suited for college, and it is no shame to follow a career that doesn't require a degree (my father was a diesel mechanic, and I was proud of him, so heck yeah).

But I do think we have a societal obligation to give all of our kids a good, well-rounded education in the basics, including algebra, before turning them loose to pursue happiness in their own preferred way. Gabriela was let down by the system. I don't think the answer lies in ignoring the problem and saying that arbitrary chunks of our education aren't important, as Cohen suggests.

[Mr. Shakes]

I think Richard Cohen may have a learning disability. Perhaps I'm being too generous, but I didn't find myself angry with what he wrote as much as sad. It quite pointedly reminded me of some of my fellow classmates I tutored in high school - defensive, dismissive, and masking one's feelings of inadequacy. Many of them just had a learning disability to work through, not an innate inability to do math.

That's not meant to serve as an excuse for what he wrote, but rather an endorsement of identifying and diagnosing learning disabilities, lest they manifest into, well, an ill-advised column like Cohen's.

[Shakespeare's Sister]

Oops. That was me. I forgot to change the name.

[Linkmeister]

I'd also argue that Cohen doesn't recognize that he uses algebra quite often. If you've got an unknown that you can solve for using knowns, then you're using algebra.

"How long will it take me to get from Tucson to Phoenix at 60mph? Well, city center to city center is 120 miles, so T=120/60, where T = time (in hours)."

[Phoenician in a time of Romans]

WTF? Algebra is the basic tool necessary to use spreadsheets.

Calculus - now *there's* something that turned out to be totally useless to me after I stopped having to analyse algorithms...

[Night Bird]

Oh, I love Math...I really do. My kids look at me like I am nuts but statistics and Calculus were favorite subjects.

Lance,

How does this event< sound to you???

[Jennifer]

I agree with the Phoenecian... having taken math all through high school and a little in college, I use algebra and geometry all the time, but could not tell you the last time I used Calculus other than to answer a crossword puzzle.

[Allan Connery]

Some advice for Richard Cohen, courtesy of Samuel Johnson: "Five hours of the four-and-tweny unemployed are enough for a man to go mad in; so I would advise you, Sir, to study algebra. ... Your head would get less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbours about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow."

Sometimes it seems to me (and I have an inside view of the situation) that journalism is a refuge for the numerically incompetent.

As Mark Twain said, "I am not the editor of a newspaper and I shall always try to do right and be good so that God will not make me one."

However, if I were the editor of a newspaper, I'd be looking to hire people who'd taken at least a freshman course in statistics and probability theory. Moreover, I'd be looking for the ones who'd taken the course seriously – not merely as a requirement to be fulfilled, but as an augmentation of their powers.

If there were enough people like that in the news business, we'd see fewer scare-of-the-week stories based on three-rat experiments.

There are already enough journalists who can perform as stenographers to the powerful. Now we need journalists who've studied some algebra – not to mention history, science, economics, finance and accounting, among other things.

And I mean people who've studied these subjects, not merely completed the required work in watered-down introductory courses.

Why so much education for a minor calling? Journalists profess to help us understand the world, so it would be useful for them to understand it themselves, however imperfectly.

Instead we have Richard Cohen, satisfied with his understanding of our highly abstract and numerical civilization, even though he has no algebra. Jesus wept.

[Phoenician in a time of Romans]

However, if I were the editor of a newspaper, I'd be looking to hire people who'd taken at least a freshman course in statistics and probability theory. Moreover, I'd be looking for the ones who'd taken the course seriously – not merely as a requirement to be fulfilled, but as an augmentation of their powers.

If there were enough people like that in the news business, we'd see fewer scare-of-the-week stories based on three-rat experiments.

God, yes.

I won't tell you how many times I've been in gun arguments, bought up the far higher rate of firearm homicide in the States compared to other countries, and had someone reply "Oh, that's due to the [BLACKS BLACKS BLACKS POOR]. If you take them out, us normal [WHITE WHITE WHITE MIDDLECLASS] people have the same level of homicides."

Blacks make up 12% of the population. The US firearm homicide rate is 3 times that of Canada, 5 times that of Australia or New Zealand. And yet they never twig to what those numbers imply, but just keep spouting the same nonsense...

[Temple Stark]

Cohen seems most guilty of not writing a very clear column, not quite knowing the point he was trying to make and writing on a wing and a prayer hpping to find a point as he went.

I am also against the idea of a billion and one critics assailing the guy without asking what he meant.

I know it will happen, PZ Myers did it particularly well, but most critics seemto just want to enjoy the opportunity to assail as stupid, major publication columnists as a breed.

The rule always applies - put yourself in their shoes first.

[Temple Stark]

And I did want to mention but forgot - great headline

[Porlock Junior]

There's merit in what Temple Stark says; jumping on someone immediately is not generally the best approach to making things better. But the argument has to clear a thumping great hurdle right off the starting blocks:

He didn't make himself clear? Exactly what is it that he's paid to do? He was, at least for a moment, being quite incompetent at his job. In that job, a failure in performance is humiliatingly public; this obliges us to make some balance between "that's what he signed up for" and compassion for an erring fellow being.

All together now: if an engineer messes up his math the way this guy messed up his writing, a bridge falls down. There. That feels much better.

But dammit, he was asking for it here. He could have written a consoling and honest essay about the fact that you can live a useful, reasonably pleasant life if you are hopeless in math, because there are many other things to do; so go and be good at those. What he did write was, in considerable part, an attack on the people who can do the things he can't do, who are a bunch of bumbling illiterates who are inept at the important things in life. And probably smell bad.

And, as Myers pointed out in the first place,
that's not only a foolish position, it's a lie. If he and the young lady have not met people who can do math and write an excellent paragraph, then their contacts have been pathetically restricted. Get out more, sir. It's good for you; especially if you're a journalist.

[Jim McCulloch]

Perhaps we are being too ungenerous to Cohen. I read his column, briefly, as it deserved, and the point I was left with was that mathematics, as taught, blights young people's lives. This is in fact true. A similar and equally true point has often been made, usually by English majors, about the reading and writing component of miseducation, and without the same outraged response by churlish bloggers. Give the guy a break.

[harry near indy]

lance, the purpose of education is not to make a good living.

the purpose of education is to live a good life.

i used to work as a newspaper reporter. i left that field.

crap like cohen's make me gladder that i left that field, because i don't want to say i'm in the same business as him.

[burritoboy]

A purely vocational educational system would require much, much MORE math rather than less. Indeed, the only two subjects for the littler kids (pre-high school) would probably be:

a. reading manuals and business communications
b. intense focus on math and basic technologies

(beyond brainwashing the kids not to come to work stoned, high or drunk).

Besides, of course, as others have mentioned, that spreadsheets (which basically everybody in corporate America stares at all day long) are.............simply algebra engines.

[Harold]

Writing is a higher form of reasoning than algebra?

More from Samuel Johnson: "Sir, a man might write such stuff forever, if he would abandon his mind to it."