Math ) Teachers Are the Key

skills are useful for different careers, and our math education should be changed to reflect this fact.” There is apparently very little to disagree with in the claim. But it completely misses the urgency in addressing the crisis facing us. The “worry” is based mostly on the poor learning and hence poor performance of our high school students who are just not ready at graduation to either succeed in the current job market or in college programs. Garfunkel and Mumford propose major curriculum revisions, in effect to make the curriculum more practical and more relevant to the marketplace. A properly revised curriculum certainly makes sense for many, and perhaps even most, students. Innovative teachers, and not just in high school (see, for example, K. Stroyan’s piece in this column—Notices, Volume 58, Number 8), already use many of the ideas (for example, introducing reallife examples) they propose. But here is the rub: there are not enough knowledgeable, talented math teachers in our public, and many private, high schools. Many math classes are taught by people with scant knowledge, and little love, of mathematics. We need to emphasize the need for content knowledge for our teachers. With only superficial understanding of math, one can teach applications of mathematics to neither the real world nor to astrophysics. With the minimal requirements for mathematics knowledge that qualify for most high school teacher certification today, one cannot truly teach mathematics at all. Even more worrisome, the problem begins much earlier, probably in kindergarten, with teachers uneasy with mathematics projecting their uneasiness onto students. No one will ever tell you “English was my worst subject,” but many elementary school teachers are unashamed to admit to the claim that “studying math gave me nightmares.” Math education is hot. The venerable New York Times published an op-ed piece by S. Garfunkel and D. Mumford in August of 2011 (http:// www.nytimes.com/2011/08/25/opinion/ how-to-fix-our-math-education.html?_ r=2&ref=contributors) that, on first reading appears to be right on the mark. However, because it omits several key issues, their proposal invites many negative consequences and would ultimately lead to further delays in solving the problems besetting our troubled educational enterprise. A lively follow-up discussion on the New York Times blog for students (http://learning.blogs.nytimes. com/2011/08/26/do-we-need-a-new-way-toteach-math/?scp=1&sq=Mumford&st=cse) produced about twenty responses by September 19— roughly three to one in disagreement with the authors. Garfunkel and Mumford write, “There is widespread alarm in the United States about the state of our math education. The anxiety can be traced to the poor performance of American students on various international tests ... [T]his worry, however, is based on the assumption that there is a single established body of mathematical skills that everyone needs to know to be prepared for twenty-first-century careers. This assumption is wrong. The truth is that different sets of math (Math) Teachers Are the Key