New Math Policies Would Hurt Gifted Students Commentary Perhaps Alan Erisman, who headed a team of applied mathematicians at Boeing, sums up the education of numbers best. Erisman, author of the upcoming book “The Math Myth,” says, “If we taught English the way we teach math, students would spend all their time doing spelling tests and diagramming sentences but never read a great book or ever read poetry.” That seems to be one of the issues the California’s Instructional Quality Commission is seeking to address as it updates its list of suggestions to math instructors. It’s seeking to determine how to help students reach the math standards established by the state.