Good evening welcome to the National Museum of mathematics and to a very special event. I think we are all delighted that the museum is putting on this event tonight and even more delighted that they are doing it with the support of the Mathematical Association of america which is helping out tonight and in particular they loaned us james hansen tonight whom i will introduce in a moment. My name is john ewing. Im the president of math for america and i am a mathematician [applause] this was not meant to be an aa meeting by the way. [laughter] every professional mathematician knows that mathematicians and their subject have a certain reputation. A world famous mathematician is walking in the countryside one day when he comes upon a huge flock of sheep and being a world famous mathematician goes up to the shepherd and makes a proposition. 100 against one of your sheep that i can tell can tell you instantly how many sheep are in the flock. The shepherd knowing that there were an awful lot of sheep said okay, ill try it. The mathematician looks around and said there are 937 sheep in this flock. The shepherd set incredible. Thats incredible. The mathematician picks up an animal, throws around around his shoulder and begins to walk away. The shepherd runs after him, weight, weight he said. Double or nothing i can tell you exactly what your profession is. Now the mathematician thinks this is unlikely so he says sure, go ahead the shipper said, you are a world famous mathematician. Incredible said the mathematician per how could you possibly know . Well said the shepherd, put down my dog and ill tell you. This reputation is not new. In 1914, william lewis, the principle of William Penn High School in philadelphia wrote about democratizing education. He focused on High School Mathematics. My objection he wrote to the traditional requirements is largely empirical. I have seen so many pupils driven out of the school by work which could not have any practical advantage to them and i have watched so many classes under the caption of algebra that i have come to believe that we should discriminate as carefully as possible between those pupils who really need the advance mathematics and those will find other work more profitable. 1914. What mathematics we teach in our high schools has been debated for the past centrally, often for and i am i toward. You may be unaware that arithmetic was not taught in Elementary School in the colonial period. Spelling reading and writing constituted the great them at that time. Arithmetic was known as vulgar. Arithmetic was needed and when it was needed it was learned on the job. By the early 20th century algebra and geometry were part of the curriculum in nearly every high school in the country. The Graduation Rate was 8 as Graduation Rates climb, the role of mathematics became a contentious issue almost everywhere. It was then as it continues to be now the most difficult of subjects for many students did culminated at the end of the 20th century with three provocative and exceptional essays written by underwood dudley, a mathematics professor with the title why math, is mathematics necessary and what is mathematics four. To the dismay of any mathematicians, he argued that there were many good reasons to teach mathematics but utility wasnt one of them. Almost all jobs he wrote require no knowledge of algebra and the llama tree at all. He went on, if algebra were necessary for 75 of all jobs, our algebra, our algebra textbooks would be filled with onthejob problems since examples would be so plentiful. This is clearly not the case. The math mystery by Andrew Hacker is the child of the century long debate. Its also part of woody doug lees essays. The two authors reached very different conclusions. His High School Mathematics, are they serving society. How should be taught and why should be taught . These are are hard questions and i believe that finding answers to hard questions is best done in open forms. Thats why were here tonight. Our two speakers are Andrew Hacker and james. You will be glad to know i have reached the point where i introduce them. Andrew hacker is a professor of Political Science at Queens College in the City University of new york, where in addition to teaching Political Science he has taught an experimental course in mathematics literacy. He was an undergraduate at Amherst College and received his phd from princeton university. He taught at cornell and since then he has been on the faculty of Queens College. He is the author of ten books and a sample of the title suggest their reach. Two nations, blackandwhite, separate, hostile and unequal, mismatch, the growing growing gulf between women and men, higher education, how colleges are wasting our money and failing our kids and what we can do about it. In 19 in 2012 he published an oped entitled is algebra necessary which led to his recent book the math math and other stem delusions. Setting the stage for tonight discussion. Whether or not you agree with the substance of these books im sure you will all agree that the titles are, every one of them exceedingly clever. James grew up in Adelaide Australia and when he speaks tonight you may detect that he is not a native of new york. He received his undergraduate degree in mathematics at Adelaide University and came to the u. S. In 1988 where he received his phd in mathematics also from princeton university. After teaching at st. Marys college in maryland and exceptional liberal arts college, i might add, he followed his wife to boston where he soon turned his attention to the general state of k12 mathematics. Eventually he found himself at a private school in South Borough where he founded the institute of mathematics. He consults with schools all across the globe on the teaching of middle school and High School Mathematics. He is also the author of a number of books, mathematic activities for students in clubs, mathematics galore and worthless puzzle books without words and more without words, both of which im told were being presently translated into serbian. I had offered to complete the translation for him tonight, but he is also the leader of a project based on how we perceive and enjoy mathematics. This will be divided into six segments. 215 minute presentation by each of our speakers to lay out the case, to eight minute responses from each and then questions and answers from the audience while the questions are from the audience and the answers are presumably from the speakers. My job tonight is to keep us on schedule and i will do so with ruthless resolve. I would like professor Heckert Heckert professor hacker to begin the presentation. [applause] thank you. It is a pleasure to be here. I may be the only non mathematician in the house, but i thats the reason im here. At this point it is not my intention to make you all math teachers or to put you out of business. I think youre granting glorious and there are total, at last count because im a statistician, 217,584 teachers of mathematics in this country. I dont get has anything to fear from me. Im a political scientist. The chief duty of clinical scientist is to analyze policy, governmental policies which require everyone to do a certain thing. Very simply if youre going to drive a car you have to pass a test. The government said that. If youre going to have a child, child has to be vaccinated. We understand that. What interested me was governmental policy that we have which is that every single young person in this country will be required to take a full sequence of mathematics. Algebra, geometry, precalc and for many the ideal is to have everybody in calculus. My simple reason for being here and simple reason for writing my book can be summed up in one word. I understand we have some visual aids here. I brought one of my own. May i put it down. [laughter] thank you. And please keep that up while im talking. We currently have, another statistic, 4 million 16yearolds in the goal is to have every single one of them enrolled in algebra two. We have coming up the common core and the common core is, by the way it is for everybody. It says career and College Ready but everybody has to pass the common core test and they are tests which are going to be conducted nationally and algebra two is going to be there. We are going to be in for some problems. We are ready have some. The math requirement, the math heard or if you like takes it tremendous toll every year. We rank, in in the united states, very low, about 28th in the the number of our young people who finish high school. Yes. Our High School Dropout rate is 20 . One out of every five young people you see have failed to finish high school. The major academic reason for that is failure or failing a math class. I know there are other reasons but the academic reason is this. We dont keep exact figures on this but a majority of students eventually fail one or more math classes. Is it because theyre ignorant or stupid or because its because theyre asking something of everyone that we really shouldnt be requiring universally. One out of five doesnt graduate of those who graduate from high school and go on to college 43 do not graduate. Its actually close to 45 . This is one of the highest College Dropout rates in the advanced world. We have more colleges but we have fewer people finishing college. Why because colleges mindlessly require mathematics of everybody , even if youre going to major in poetry or modern dance or interior design. You still have to have an algebra test to get on board. We have a fantastic talent here. Worry are shooting ourselves in the foot. People who would be very skilled and talented in all sorts of fields are not being allowed to proceed or even, at a junior college, somebody who wants an associate degree or certificate in cosmetology, Industrial Design or not that, commercial arts. Even they have to pass a math test and as a result our attrition rate is terrible. 43 of people taking the act are not college or ready. 43 taking it are not College Ready. Do you know why . Its because College Ready requires advanced mathematics for everybody. As a result some very Good Students who might be in my College Class wont be there because of this requirement. Now, my book is called the math math. The more i studied, the more i discovered that people are entrenched, im trying to be kind here, entrenched with a certain occupation, profession or vocation. They will literally say anything to defend the status quo from which they benefit. This can can be true of Police Officers or anyone. I discovered whats being told about math is sheer myth. For example theres a 62 figure, we have something called the american diploma project. 62 of all occupations will need algebra. This is certainly a myth. At most 5 of occupations need algebra. I respect those. In the course of writing my book i went down to marietta georgia where i interviewed aeronautical engineers and i was just blown away how they use calculus to study the ice on wings. There were fantastic things. They certainly need mathematics and wall street who use calculus all the time. They study risks and the rest. But not 62 . Thats a question. If we only talk in occupational terms why the other 95 has to take it. I dont want to get too much into the question that theres a shortage of people with stem qualifications. In fact, the people with degrees in stem subjects, less than half, only slightly more than one third are working in stem occupations now. We actually have an oversupply of people with stem qualifications. We are told we better watch out in the global competition because korea, china, singapore are far ahead of us in mathematics. Its true. Their students score high on the International Math test. They score high because they were 23 hours a day. The biggest illness among young people in korea is sleep deprivation. They were 23 hours a day and i want to say this in the best way. If the International Competitions were on check for crossword puzzles, they would score higher there. The big challenge is not more math but getting our kids to work 23 hours and i dont emphasize that. Theres a whole question of whether or not math sharpens our mind. I agree that studying math and really doing well at it sharpens your mind for dealing with mathematics. Thats for sure. There is no evidence whatever that mastering mathematics makes you excel in other fields. Theres none whatsoever. I did a short test of my own at Queens College because i couldnt find any evidence. I took the math scores of varying coming freshmen and i compared the math scores with the history scores. Weighing evidence, and guess what, the correlation was zero. To be high in math or not in history or vice versa. Map does not help in other fields and its just another myth. Now, there certainly, and im not sure what to call this a myth. There is the view, for example i keep his book by my bedside. Its one of the best books ive read on showing a layperson what mathematics really is. He closes the book, he believes that mathematics is one of the greatest creations of the human mind, perhaps even the greatest. Okay ill go along with that. I simply asked, is it something we created or is it something weve discovered . Newton had to discover it. Its like pie, for example. Waiting create pie but we had to find it and show how to use it. What im saying is, i would really love for everybody to appreciate mathematics. I would love to have math teachers take time and treat it like a liberal art so all of us. [inaudible] theres also the view that mathematics is objective which is to say theres one right answer and you dont have to worry about opinions, bias, things like that. This may well well be true, but theres Something Else going on. Mathematics has builtin biases, not so much the subject but the way we assess it and evaluate it. One thing we know, i have a chapter in the book called gender gap in mathematics. Girls and young women actually get higher grades in math courses than the guys do. They do. We have enough studies across the board to show that. The girls get higher grades. But when it comes to the test men are always ahead. I would really ask you to find some way of having tests because were going to continue to test people to give girls in the young women to show what they know for the last halfcentury girls have been 30 points behind boys on the sat. By the way, thats consequential. One consequence is the National Merit scholarship. The National Merit do not give a gender break down for the winners. They refused to do it. They hide that information. You know why . Because 53 of the people who enter the National Merit competition are girls. Boys end up getting 53 of the awards. Why . Because they score 30 points higher than the girls do on these tests. The same thing thats going to happen with the common core. This is one reason why girls find it harder to get into ivy League Schools. Ivy League Schools require 700 before the open your application on mathematics. Both math and verbal, 700. Two thirds of those 700 are boys. As a result stanford, yale, for example are majority men. Why because of the math requirement. Now girls are doing okay in your classes, but please, i need some advice, the country does on how to help them tests. Math requires okay do i think we should abolish algebra . No. Of course not. I do want to see other options and alternatives and stead of the full sequence for everybody at tenth grade, we can work this out. Begin to offer options i teach a class at my college in the Math Department called numeracy 101 which is about citizen statistics. How to read a corporate report. How to look at the federal budget. It doesnt require any math. I dont think we have to be ashamed of that at all. [applause] and now ill introduce james. Thank you. This is a real honor and a real treat. Thank you doctor hacker. This is a great conversation. It is vital that we reassess the state of Mathematics Education in our nation over and over again. [inaudible] think you for being here today. Its truly wonderful that we adults and parents can double check truths for ourselves and personally assess the claims made in the media and the internet and in general conversation. We are brave enough to ask how do we know what we know and not become. [inaudible] i have enjoyed what he had to say. I have an interpretation that some might find surprising. I think hes arguing strongly for the common core mathematics. [inaudible] there are mighty strong warnings about how not to implement the common core standard. Like me, he doesnt want implementation. [inaudible] above all leading a human discussion experience with mathematics being pushed aside. I couldnt agree more that these are real concerns and many feel the same way. Let me just try putting this on the screen. Im basing my discussion. [inaudible] i just had some beautiful comments about the joy of mathematics. Id like to ask you to share my. [inaudible] about teaching mathematics. I completely agree with dr. Hecker when he proposed in chapter one that we strongly focus on a path when teaching mathematics. He praises philosophy, art, history all white teaching math. We should teach the human story of mathematics. But actually the content of the High School Level can be argued that is somewhat secondary. I have never used a formula in my personal life. Now i view some in my