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WRONG ANSWER
The Case Against Algebra II
By Nicholson Baker
LIFE AS A TERRORIST
Uncovering My FBI File
By William T. Vollmann
THE TWO DAVISES AND THE RUG
A story by Lydia Davis
WRONG ANSWER
The case against Algebra II
By Nicholson Baker
I n 1545, Girolamo
Cardano, a doctor, a
outburst of the living
imagination. From its diz-
wearer of magical amu- zy summit genius takes its
lets, and a compulsive flight, and in its wealth of
gambler, published a verdure its devotees find
an everlasting holiday.
math book in Latin called
Ars Magna. The “great Then why, if math is
art” of the title was alge- so great and timeless and
bra. When Cardano was beautiful, do millions of
done, he knew he had people hate it so much?
come up with something In particular, why do so
huge and powerful and many high school stu-
timeless; on the last page dents hate algebra? On
was the declaration, an opinion-gathering
written in five years, website called Ampli-
may it last as many cate, 86 percent of recent
thousands. The equa- respondents registered a
tions in Ars Mag na hatred for algebra—
looked very different from putting it near the top of
the ones we are familiar with—here, for dents are taught, with varying degrees Amplicate’s list of disliked high
instance, is how Cardano wrote the of success, today. school subjects, just below geometry.
solution to x3 + 6x = 20: That’s what’s so amazing and myste- Grant Wiggins, an educational con-
rious about the mathematical universe. sultant and former teacher, told me it
Rv : cu. : R108 p : 10m : Rv : It doesn’t go out of date. It’s bigger than was a “nasty gatekeeper course”: the
cu. R108m : 10 history. It offers seemingly superhuman compulsory Greek grammar of the
powers of interlinkage. It’s true. Math- modern era.
But the algebraic rules Cardano de- ematics, said a professor named James Lots of students love math, of
scribed and codified are variants of Byrnie Shaw in 1918, is a kind of an- course. It comes easily to them, or it
the techniques that millions of stu- cient sequoia of knowledge, rooted in doesn’t come easily but they are willing
the labors and learning of the dead: to put in the hours and they enjoy the
Nicholson Baker is the author of fourteen
books. His new novel, Traveling Sprin- challenge. (That’s my story, more or
kler, will be published this month by Blue Its foliage is in the atmosphere of less: in high school, I took a week to
Rider Press. abstraction; its inflorescence is the memorize the problem-solving tactics
I
going to get me in life?
Is poking my eye with a pencil an ac-
ceptable substitute for my algebra But again you discover, to your
homework? magine for a moment that you are disappointment, that the lizard im-
Algebra is the huge fucking dam that a high school student, halfway age is just a bit of bait-and-switch.
prevents me from flowing, and being through a required Algebra II class. It’s There’s nothing about surface ten-
a better person. a Monday, and this week, it seems, sion or walking on water in Chapter
I need to take 11 algebra tests in 2 you’re moving into something called 8—and indeed, the caption would
hours. its six in the morning and “rational functions.” (Last week was a puzzle an expert on reptilian loco-
I’ve got to pass them or I fail and I strenuous forced march through loga- motion, since basilisk lizards don’t
can’t start school till I pass. PRAY rithms.) You’re sleepy, bored, and dis- actually rely on surface tension to
FOR THE GIRL IN PERPETUAL
ALGEBRA HELL.
couraged. There’s an inspiring poster run on water. They’re not like water
I have my Algebra EOC tomorrow. I on the wall—it shows a photograph of striders; they’re much too heavy. The
have no clue what I am doing. Einstein in a sweater, saying, “Do not real miracle of the basilisk lizard is
There is almost exactly 24 hours un- worry about your difficulties in math- that it can scamper over Costa Rican
til the test. So, if I just study and ematics; I can assure you that mine are rivers (and over laboratory tanks at
study and study, maybe I will actual- still greater.” The word asymptote is Harvard’s Museum of Comparative
ly get a 70 on it? Hell, I’ll take a 70. I on the whiteboard, and below it, quiz Zoology) by relying on the momen-
ran my hand through my hair earlier thursday ! The teacher is hard- tary inertia of the boluses of water
when I woke up, and a bunch of hair working, jokey, smart, exhausted—she beneath its fleet, long-toed feet. If
came out. I’M STRESSING TO knows most of the kids in her class basilisk lizards had to rely instead on
THE POINT WHERE MY HAIR
IS FALLING OUT.
don’t want to be there. equations of surface tension they
Algebra. “Weightlifting for the brain” You look down at your textbook, would sink immediately, as many
my ass. More like death of all happi- which is published by Pearson. It’s very algebra students do.
ness in the world. new and very heavy. It’s called Algebra So no lizards, no geckos, no robots.
I really really hate Algebra 2, wish I 2 Common Core. Your state has bene- Here’s what you actually learn about
was dead. . . . I want to kill myself. fited from a federal Race to the Top rational functions in Chapter 8 of Pear-
Help? If you can? grant that has encouraged your school son’s Algebra 2 Common Core:
to buy many copies of this new, expen-
The reason these kids are upset is sive textbook, along with the associated A rational function is a function that
P(x)
that they are required to do some- workbooks and software licenses, all of you can write in the form f(x) =Q(x) ,
where P(x) and Q(x) are polynomial
thing they can’t do. They are forced, which conform on every page and every functions. The domain of f(x) is all real
repeatedly, to stare at hairy, square- screen to the guidelines spelled out in numbers except those for which
rooted, polynomialed horseradish the new Common Core State Stan- Q(x) = 0.
clumps of mute symbology that irri- dards for math, now adopted through-
tate them, that stop them in their out the country. Not only that, a rational function
tracks, that they can’t understand. The textbook’s cover is black, with can be continuous or discontinuous,
The homework is unrelenting, the a nice illustration of a looming ro- and a continuous rational function is
algorithms get longer and trickier, the botic gecko. The gecko robot has one that, if you graph it, “has no jumps,
quizzes keep coming. Sooner or later, green compound eyes and is held to- breaks, or holes.” No holes? We’ll see
many of them hit the wall. They fail gether with shiny chrome screws. It about that.
A
If a is a real number for which the de- has made 21 of her last 30 free throws, time comes.
nominator of a rational function f(x) is an average of 70 percent: “How many
zero, then a is not in the domain of more consecutive free throws does she rne Duncan, the U.S. secretary
f(x). The graph of f(x) is not continu- need to raise her free throw percentage of education, wants everyone working
g ous at x = a and the function has a to 75%?” their asymptotes off, learning about ra-
, point of discontinuity at x = a. How very odd, you think: I don’t tional functions and their points of dis-
have to know any algebra at all in order continuity. He is one of the required-
a Then you learn something more to figure out that the answer to this algebra “Standardistas” (as the education
n about points of discontinuity: they free-throw question is 6. All I need is blogger Susan Ohanian calls them), and
can be either removable or non- arithmetic and a little trial and error. he is backing up his views with the fi-
removable. For instance: “The graph But that’s not what the textbook wants. nancial power of the federal govern-
ment. In 2011, Duncan—a
broad-shouldered, well-
meaning, Harvard-educated
e
former basketball player from
Chicago who occasionally
scrimmages with President
Obama—gave a speech under
r a spotlighted infinity symbol
at the annual meeting of the
National Council of Teachers
of Mathematics (NCTM).
“In recent years,” he told
d the crowd, “it has become
increasingly clear to the
country—not just to you
guys as teachers—that alge-
bra is a key, maybe the key, to
success in college. Students
who have completed Algebra
II in high school are twice as
t likely to earn a degree as
those who didn’t.” A rigorous
dose of algebra teaches stu-
r dents reasoning and logic, he
f claimed, leading to academic
success “not just in math but
across the curriculum.”
Even if you don’t plan to
go to college, Duncan ar-
gued, you should take Alge-
t bra II. “Airplane mechanics
do complex measurements
and work with proportions
and ratios,” he said. “X-ray
of y = (x + 3)(x
x+2
+ 2)
has a removable dis- It wants you to model the free-throw technicians calculate time exposures to
, continuity at x = −2.” Simple as pie percentage as a rational function and capture the cleanest possible image.
l
on a parsonage table. make a little graph. Show your work, or Most factory workers need to under-
h To reinforce your learning—to you fail. FML! stand Algebra II or even some trigo-
make it really bake itself in your mind, Algebra 2 Common Core is, in other nometry to operate complex manufac-
so that you’ll be able to call upon it in words, a typical, old-fashioned algebra turing electronic equipment. These are
times of quantitative uncertainty in textbook. It’s a highly efficient engine the jobs and these are the skills re-
the years to come—there are some for the creation of math rage: a dead quired to compete successfully in to-
s exercises to do. Then come a few word scrap heap of repellent terminology, a day’s economy.”
problems. These have a familiar ring. collection of spiky, decontextualized, “Rigor” is Duncan’s watchword—he
One is about how many times a girl multistep mathematical black-box used it several times in his speech. His
would have to get a perfect score on a techniques that you must practice first experiment with algebraic rigor
ESSAY 33
S
declined.” Duncan was undeterred. Mathematical Monthly in 1987: wouldn’t think of asking.”
Everyone must master algebra, he con-
tinued to insist, because if everyone Mathematics is so useful that there trogatz is right: less is more. We
learns it, everyone will be ready for could be no civilization without it, and should, I think, create a new, one-year
it is so beautiful that some theorems and
college, and if everyone is ready for col- their proofs—those which cause us to
teaser course for ninth graders, which
lege, everyone will be above average. gasp, or to laugh out loud with delight— would briefly cover a few techniques of
Algebra II, he believes, is the mystic should be hanging in museums. algebraic manipulation, some mind-
portal to prosperity. stretching geometric proofs, some nifty
Duncan is especially enthusiastic And yet: “The vast majority of the things about parabolas and conic sec-
about the rigor built into the Common human race, and the vast majority of tions, and even perhaps a soft-core hint
Core standards, developed by a non- the college-educated human race nev- of the infinitesimal, change-explaining
profit called Achieve and paid for by er need any mathematics beyond powers of calculus. Throw in some scat-
grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates arithmetic to survive successfully.” ter plots and data analysis, a touch of
Foundation. (“High standards mean We must stop telling students lies, mathematical logic, and several repre-
more than just teaching all students Dudley maintains, to the discomfiture sentative topics in math history and
Algebra II,” said Melinda Gates in a of some of his colleagues. “We cannot math appreciation. Would it hurt kids
2009 speech. “It means teaching all justify teaching mathematics to 18-year- to learn that Boole, the inventor of
students the skills necessary for success olds by asserting that they will find it modern logic, was almost entirely self-
in Algebra II, so they can apply them useful,” he wrote. “We cannot claim that taught, or that the Bernoulli brothers
in different areas throughout their lives we are presenting beauty, either. We are, competed between them to work out
and their careers.”) The Common Core of course, but what percentage of our the brachistochrone problem, or that
vade mecum starts whanging away at students can see it, however dimly?” Sofia Kovalevskaya first became inter-
algebraic thinking skills as early as kin- I called Dudley and asked him point- ested in math when she saw some
dergarten. By the end of seventh grade, blank whether we should be requiring strange differential equations printed on
the minds of Common Cored children Algebra II of all high schoolers. “Good sheets of paper that had been used to
will supposedly be so handy with alge- heavens, no,” he said. “Forcing people wallpaper a room in her house, or that
braic unknowns that they’ll be able to, to take mathematics is just terrible. We Cardano lost so much money and wast-
in the words of the official document, shouldn’t do it. But we are.” He then ed so much time at the card tables that
“solve word problems leading to equa- warned me that I would get in trouble it prompted him to write the first full
tions of the form px + q = r and for writing this article, although he also study of the mathematics of probability?
p(x + q) = r, where p, q, and r are spe- said that he thought, or hoped, that his Make it a required course. Six weeks
cific rational numbers.” These micro- opinions were shared by a silent major- of factoring and solving simple equa-
managerial, misbegotten, joy-stunting ity of math teachers. tions is enough to give any student a
standards are, said Duncan, a “real Andrew Hacker, a political scientist rough idea of what the algebraic ars
game changer,” and will be rolled out at CUNY, took a similar position in a magna is really like, and whether he or
nationwide this academic year. 2012 op-ed for the New York Times she has any head for it. Use as textbooks
There was plenty of polite applause called “Is Algebra Necessary?” His piece well-written, inexpensive works such as
after Duncan’s NCTM speech, but not caused an earthquake in the math Strogatz’s The Joy of x or William Dun-
all educators agree with what he’s do- world, and there were ripostes from some ham’s Journey Through Genius, which
ing. “I’m a math guy,” Grant Wiggins professors, most notably UC Berkeley’s are fascinating whether or not you can
told me. “It’s not like I’m some fuzzy- Edward Frenkel, who wrote passionately follow all the doodling with variables.
headed humanist.” But where, he won- but confusingly about the right to bear Take students to see the mathematical
D
gravy, really.
natural beauty, a
uring these recent hand- welcoming atmosphere
wringing decades, a few experienced and a diverse group of
teachers have written books that argue neighbors who push the
persuasively against the wrongheaded-
ness of obligatory math. In 1994, Mi- envelope of intellectual
chael Smith, a consultant and test-prep and cultural achievement.
coach then teaching at the University
of Tennessee, published Humble Pi: The Pennswood Village is strong on caring, too, with a full continuum
Role Mathematics Should Play in Amer- of on-campus, resident-centered care, and easy access to the
ican Education. The book grew out of region’s award-winning medical centers.
an article he originally wrote for The
Atlantic. No study, he claimed, It’s all just a short drive from Philadelphia, or an enjoyable train
has supported the contention that the trip to New York or Washington, DC. And it’s all not-for-profit, at a
abstractions of algebra, geometry, and surprisingly affordable price.
trigonometry, which so many students
are required to learn, are practical in
any general sense, except for a small
number of occupations.
Call 888-401-9652
today for your FREE
At the last minute, The Atlantic had
doubts and killed the article. Smith information kit.
published it instead in the Phi Delta 1382 Newtown-Langhorne Rd
Kappan, where it inspired a barrage of Newtown, PA 18940
www.pennswood.org
PNWDHM
ESSAY 35
H
received renewal notifications placed causation. than does he who is devoid of mathe-
matical training.
from an independent magazine
ere’s the funny thing. This has
clearinghouse doing business all happened before, beginning about a The high school syllabus had to
under the names Magazine Bill- hundred years ago, and much of the change to accommodate the needs of
ing Services, Publishers Process- controversy centered around Chicago, universal education, Morrison believed.
ing Services Inc., and American Arne Duncan’s hometown. In 1907, “School administrators and school pa-
Consumer Publish Assoc. These education laws changed in Chicago, trons,” he wrote in 1921, “have come to
companies have not been autho- more or less in concert with changes the conclusion that algebra and geom-
happening across the country. Instead etry as traditionally taught in the high
rized to sell subscriptions on be- of being allowed to leave school at four- schools are intolerable failures.”
half of Harper’s Magazine. teen, children were now required to Morrison’s beliefs were seconded by
attend through the age of sixteen. There another University of Chicago profes-
If you receive a renewal notice they sat by the thousands at their wood- sor, John Franklin Bobbitt, who wrote
and are unsure of its authenticity, en desks, awaiting daily instruction. But in 1922 that “students in general do not
please call our subscriber ser- what was there for teachers to teach? need algebra, geometry, or trigonome-
Well, first they taught the things try,” and by a strong-willed reformer,
vices department and order your
they’d always taught, the things that William McAndrew, who became su-
renewal through them. You may colleges required: Latin grammar, En- perintendent of Chicago schools in
contact subscriber services by glish grammar and composition, alge- 1924. McAndrew, like Morrison, had
calling our toll-free number, bra, geometry, and trigonometry. The taught algebra and geometry, and he
(800) 444-4653, or via the Web result, especially in math classes, was could discern (as he told an audience of
at www.harpers.org.
36 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / SEPTEMBER 2013
80375X © 2013
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In 1931, with about half of New — Big 33% Savings —
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The most widely read denunciation N5379
of required algebra came that same year,
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named Arthur Dean. Dean was a for- ,QFOXGHGLQWKLVFRLQVHWDUHÀQHVWTXDOLW\FHQWQLFNHOGLPHTXDUWHU
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KDOIGROODUDQGGROODUSURRIV'HHSVWUXFNIURVWHGHQJUDYLQJVFRQWUDVWZLWK
who had taught math for years; his
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was full of compassion and good sense. HDFKFRLQDVLWSURWHFWVWKHLUSULVWLQHEHDXW\1RZRYHUWKUHHGHFDGHVROG
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ESSAY 37
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of the planet. about 40 percent were taking Algebra ourselves caught up in a strangely self-
II. We got Neil Armstrong to the moon, destructive statistical cold war with
hink carefully again about this a feat that required huge supercooled other high-achieving countries. The
number: 25 percent. As the curtain rose tanks of liquid algebra, yet still the grim recruits are young teenagers, their am-
on the baby boom era—the purported duelists banged their spoons on the pot munition the little bubbles on standard-
golden age of American education, lid of unprecedented crisis. ized tests. America’s technological fu-
when high school was really high “The educational foundations of ture hinges, say the rigorists, on
school and girls wore cardigans and our society are presently being eroded whether our student population can
boys wore narrow ties and everyone by a rising tide of mediocrity that plug-and-chug the binomial theorem
aspired to work for Ford and AT&T, threatens our very future as a nation better than, say, Korean or Finnish or
when Dictaphones were king and food and a people,” said a 1983 report, A German or Chinese students. The
engineers gave us mashed-potato flakes, Nation at Risk, emanating from the childishness of this hypernationalistic
when GM was designing the Chevy Reagan White House. By lowering our mentality depresses me, and I want it
small-block V-8 engine, when missile standards, the report said, America to end, and I am not alone. n