The Math Myth

At some point somebody had to be the person that figured out all these things so the other 99% of people can use it and not think about it ever. And I'd much rather be the person solving the interesting problems than the person using the tools without truly understanding them to solve more mundane (but still probably useful and important) tasks, but that is just my personal taste.

A lot of people I meet don't understand logic and reasoning. A lot of people don't understand rigor. Many people have difficulty thinking systemically or have difficulty thinking about the 2nd and 3rd order effects of their actions. I mean, think about the way people drive and some of the things you've seen other drivers do! People also seem to be much more self centered, less civic minded, and less cognizant of details.

I wish these skills were emphasized more earlier in people's education, they are important skills for maximizing success IMO.

I think American kids would have a better understanding of 2nd and 3rd order effects if they were required to clean their own school bathrooms, like in Japan. (Disclosure: I had to clean my own school bathrooms, but did not go to school in Japan.)

It isn't even correct on the employment front, though, because it is attempting to unimaginatively extrapolate from the current state of employment.

John Nagle's comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422307 probably expresses this better than I can, but if you're going to make an advance in a scientific or engineering field — any advance — you need math. If you're planning to spend your working life as a button-pusher, carrying out algorithms that other people have designed, or proceeding blindly by trial and error, you don't need math.

But those button-pusher and blind blunderer jobs will be automated in five, ten, or maybe twenty years. And the article's comment section suggests that even today they aren't nearly as common as the article asserts.

There are other categories of work, such as child care, elder care, sex work (which, defined broadly, includes trophy wives, Hollywood, and a substantial fraction of secretaries and maids), sales, and family counseling. So there will probably still be employment that doesn't require math as long as there are humans, even if it's not the kind of employment the article discusses.

But the bigger question is whether education should be directed at employment. Is being an employee what you aspire to in your life? It is very good to be useful to other people. Allowing other people to employ me has benefited me greatly, and that's true for most people I know. But being used by others is not the only or even the primary good in life.

Education is what makes us human. Education is a process of personal evolution from a dumb beast into a human being. Education gives us control over our impulses and prevents us from being suckered by predatory salespeople, politicians, lawyers, preachers, and others. At its best, education makes democracy possible despite such predators, although democracy is rarely possible because the people is nearly always sufficiently uneducated to vote it down unintentionally. Education begins before schooling and doesn't end when schooling ends, but I, like many people, have found that schooling can speed education up considerably.

And mathematics is fundamental to education in all of these senses. Even if mathematics isn't necessary for someone else to use you — which is all this "Math Myth" article tries to show — mathematics is necessary for you to judiciously choose when and how you will be used, and mathematics is necessary for citizenship.