My pet peeve

As this is a blog, I sometimes post comments about things I see in the media as well as announcements about the program. I just wanted to share with you this column that I found in the Detroit Free Press written to an advice columnist 'Dear Leanna':

"Dear Leanna: My seventh-grade daughter, Samantha, hates math. I told her that like most women, I wasn't good in math either, so if she got a D, that was OK. Her father is furious. He says she needs to do well in math to have options. She wants to be a dress designer. They need math?"

When I first read the question I was squirming in horror. Look away! '...like most women...' ???? Where does that EVEN come from? (don't answer that unless you really want to, I know very well where it comes from). Oh, the humanity!

That aside, at least the columnist addressed math attitudes (but seemed to brush aside the blatent sexism) and assumed that a 7th grader who decides that she wants to go into dress design would still have the same belief next week.

But Leanna didn't see the larger context in which math appears in design. She mentions "measuring, estimating, purchasing, budgeting, paying expenses, making a profit." That is only the part that involves arithmetic. But good design requires innovation and developing new technology and techniques. If Samantha were to restrict her skills to only those which do not involve math then she really won't have a deep understanding of how new materials are created and can be manipulated, she will have to rely on others to do that for her. Writing off math limits what you can do with a computer and knowing what a computer can even accomplish (you mean a computer does more than browse the internet?). There are an uncountable number of less tangible effects of being math illiterate.