42. America’s Math Curriculum Doesn’t Add Up

Steven Levitt (0:04)

I'm up in Northern Minnesota with my family on vacation right now, so this week's episode is a little different. It's an episode I initially created for Freakonomics Radio, and actually not just any episode, my very first try at hosting.

SPEAKER_2 (0:20)

Welcome to People I Mostly Admire with Steve Levitt.

Steven Levitt (0:27)

If you're a regular listener, then you know how frustrated I am with the current educational system. Today's episode, which first aired about two years ago, marked my transition from someone who only complains about a problem to someone who's trying to do something about it. So here's my question to you. Try to guess, what was their reaction when it first aired? Did it spur people into action, made people angry, or was it just completely ignored?

I'll tell you the answer at the end.

Sophie Levitt (0:58)

Rationalize the denominator in the equation 3 over the square root of x minus 7

Steven Levitt (1:03)

That's my daughter, Sophie Levitt.

Sophie Levitt (1:07)

I'm going to be a sophomore in high school at the University of Chicago Lab schools.

Steven Levitt (1:11)

These are the kinds of questions she's working on in her math classes, the questions that I'm responsible for helping her with.

Sophie Levitt (1:17)

Rationalize the denominator in the equation 3 over the square root of x minus 7 Find the imaginary zeros of the equation f of x equals 4x to the 4th plus 35x squared minus 9

Steven Levitt (1:29)

Can you tell us what an imaginary zero is?

Sophie Levitt (1:33)

No.

Steven Levitt (1:34)

I have four teenagers. I spend a lot of time working with them on their math homework. More often than not, after helping them answer whatever questions are assigned that day, I'm left with questions of my own, questions that I can't find good answers to. Like, why are we teaching kids these things? Does anyone actually use the math we are teaching in their daily life? Is there any benefit at all to learning this stuff? And are there not more interesting and useful things that we could be teaching them?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-math. I use mathematical thinking, statistics and data analysis constantly, whether I'm writing economics papers, trying to get better at golf, or hoping to pick winners at the racetrack. But here's the thing, the math tools I actually use, and the math tools I see people around me actually using, seem to have nothing to do with what my kids are learning at school.

Which makes me think that we must be able to do better for our children when it comes to teaching them math. So after years of idle complaining, I finally decided to try to do something about it. I wrote up a grant proposal and I convinced the philanthropy, Schmidt Futures, to give me some resources to put together a small team to explore modernizing high school math. The first step in my journey was to talk to someone who has thought about the subject much longer and more deeply than I have.

Jo Boaler (2:56)

My name is Jo Bola. I'm a professor of mathematics education at Stanford University.

Steven Levitt (3:01)

So you've written a number of books and mountains of research on reforming mathematics education. Let's just say that someone made you the Mathsar tomorrow.

Jo Boaler (3:10)

I'd love that.

Steven Levitt (3:11)

What were some of your first reforms?

Jo Boaler (3:13)

The curriculum that we teach in math classrooms was really designed in days that are long past. It was a long time ago that somebody in the US decided to teach what I think of as the geometry sandwich, a course of algebra for a whole year, followed by a course of geometry for a whole year, and then another course of algebra. I don't know any other country that does that, and it's part of the problem. So I would change the curriculum to really reflect real mathematics, and I would also change it to reflect the 21st century because math still looks in classrooms pretty much as it did in Victorian days.

Steven Levitt (3:52)

In the United States, it was the elite universities that spurred the teaching of higher level math. In 1820, for instance, Harvard began requiring knowledge of algebra to gain admittance. As a result, secondary schools started teaching algebra.

Fifty years later, Harvard added geometry to its requirements, and the secondary schools followed suit.

After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in October 1957, math education became a matter of national security. The math curriculum was overhauled with two very different goals in mind. The first goal was to increase the number of engineers, mathematicians and scientists. This led to the introduction of higher level, more abstract math, and the high school curriculum. The second goal was to develop a workforce that could do the complex calculations required to support the military and space efforts. Remember, this predates the age of modern computers.