Op-ed: Back to Basics

Here is the unedited version of an article published in the Atlanta Journal Constitution a while back. I meant to post this earlier, but forgot.

To Sum Up, Students' Math Skills Fall Short
The Atlanta Journal Constitution
18 July 2006

President Bush once said, “Rarely is the question asked, ‘Is our children learning?’” Our state’s college math students would answer with a definitive no. And I know why.

I tutor mathematics at Georgia State University. Throughout the day, I help people of all ages with math of all types, from elementary algebra to advanced calculus. I have worked with teenage students and with students in their forties who want to get a math degree or just exercise their brain. I have noticed that—whether young or old, whether full-time employees, full-time students or both—they share a single Achilles’ heel. They lack basic math skills.

When solving arithmetic, statistics or calculus problems, my tutees struggle with the additive, associative and commutative properties. They would understand derivation and integration—calculus is taught well at Georgia State—but would stumble through the basics, such as simplifying equations or complex fractions. The problem is not with our colleges or our high schools, but with our elementary and middle schools. The source of our state’s math woes lies somewhere between second and fifth grades.

My experience lacks a wide perspective. After all, Georgia State is only one university and the group of people who take summer math classes might radically differ from the overall student population. Still, Georgia State is a large university in a large city. If not indicative of the country as a whole, it strongly represents the state of education in Georgia.

If our schools fail to teach basic math, how did I learn it? I was lucky in two ways: where and to whom I was born. I was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and went to school there until fourth grade. My parents put my education above all else. In all subjects they knew, they drilled me extensively and expected only the highest grades. To alter an inspirational quote hung in my Holcomb Bridge Middle School homeroom, my parents told me that if I shoot for the moon and land among the starts, shoot again.

Perhaps my two accidents of birth can provide a solution to our fledgling mathematic education. No, I do not mean that we should send students to Russia. But for all the things that country did poorly, it excelled at mathematics education. I was methodically drilled on how to multiply, divide, reduce complex fractions and simplify equations. Our schools should learn from them.

The real path to education, however, starts at home. Learning from my parents, when I become a father I will also push my children to excel. There should be no middle ground here. If parents don’t set their children up to succeed, they set them up to fail.

Once parents step up to the plate, however, and once schools improve to better facilitate the learning process, then together we can put me out of a job.