What are we doing?

 What are we doing here anyways?

The school year so far has been the most interesting professional experience of my life. There are so many analogies to choose from to describe it here, it's overwhelming to think about. Let's go with this one: it's as if you're a truck driver, and you show up to work one day, and everything is exactly the same, except you're going to be sailing a ship instead of driving a truck. Same cargo, same destination, same timeframe. Except drive a boat not a truck. Ready? Go. 

All of that, on top of the very real fear of catching a disease that is potentially deadly, while dealing with students and parents who think it's a hoax. 

My prediction was that by October, we would be teaching students virtually. I ended up being right about the timeframe, but completely wrong about the reason. A series of fights among members of the student population escalated and was finally caught on video and reported to the police. The subsequent investigation led to the possibility that one of the students might have access to a handgun, and for the safety of all, school should be held virtually. 

School should be held virtually, for the safety of staff and students. This is a very modern sentence. When I was in school, it was not uncommon for lockdowns to last for hours. My sister stood once outside on the football field for most of the school day while a bomb threat was investigated. It turned out to lack credibility. The level of technological permeation was different as well. I didn't have a smartphone until I was a sophomore in college. If we needed to use The Interent in a class, a huge cart was wheeled into the room, with laptops that were the size of phone books whose batteries would last about 7 minutes before needing their charging cables. 

Now, though, we have a new option. As of about three weeks ago, students began to take part virtually in classes. They're actual students, actually participating, but some of them are sitting at home, trying to obtain a classroom experience while at their kitchen table, or more often, at the desk in their bedroom, or, sometimes, in their beds. So, now we have this option. For the safety of everyone involved, classes will be held virtually. With two hours notice, I had time "given" to me to prepare to teach a class that usually fills my room with students to one with nobody physically in attendance. What could possibly go wrong?

Some things don't really sink in until you do them. Sometimes, you really can't know if the stove is on without experiencing a few second degree burns. Teaching a class of real students entirely virtually is one of those things. 

Ninety seconds in and we have a problem. Nobody can see my video. This, in 2020, is to be expected. The thing that has worked flawlessly up to now, that has been an important but not critical part of class, stops working the very next minute after it becomes integral to having class at all. Once the process hangs by that thread, the bolt breaks free and wreaks havoc on the machine. What should have taken a few minutes takes nearly 20. 

Teaching in the year 2020 is a little bit like flying a mix of the Starship Enterprise and the raft Tom Hanks builds in Castaway. The Captain (teacher) is sitting in a swively chair in front of several screens of varying importance. Many buttons are present. Microphones and cameras and cables lie strewn across a work surface, and on-screen buttons flash with warnings and alerts, while dings and chimes and horns blare through loudspeakers vying for the operator's attention. "Damage report", you might say, confused momentarily that you might actually be Captain Picard, but this will only get you confused looks from all different directions. Your spaceship classroom flying through the void is being attacked, and the shields are failing. The analogy is almost complete. Teaching in 2020 is exactly like flying the spaceship I just described, if the spaceship were built by chimpanzees using balsa wood, dollar-store-brand duct tape, and a handy piece of used chewing gum here and there, where the air-tight seals are a bit leaky. 

The events of the past few months are enough to challenge anyones purpose. People are dying. Is the thing you decide to spend your hours and days doing really worth it? Do you really get anything out of your work? Does your life have purpose?

Ultimately, I have come to the conclusion that it is, for me, but not without my share of frustrations. I have gotten to spend time showing love and care and support to young adults who might never have received it from an adult in a school setting. I have spent time building relationships that are paying off already, three weeks into the school year. 

There is a faction of teachers that are seeing this time as an opportunity to challenge every convention that has plagued education for the last few decades. All of the buzzword bullshit that have been seen as solutions are now being put to a trial by fire. These teachers are re-evaluating what it means to teach, and adjusting their course for this new landscape. They are implementing solutions that work now, not ones that will work once we order some new technology and find time for professional development. We are not in the world of film cameras anymore. Yes, big picture solutions take time, but right now we need things that work right out of the box, and things that we already have lying around. 

There are, of course, some teachers that are unwilling to change. For whatever reason, they stay on their course, and continue to do things that may or may not work, with little regard for their students well being and apparent indifference to whether or not they actually learn something. I work with some teachers like this. They have been complaining about how poorly their year has been going for about three weeks. 

Baked into the reconsideration of education is the question: Why are we teaching students the things that we are? What good is factoring equations going to do them? Most other subjects are more easily applicable. The necessity for english and history are alarmingly apparent in 2020, and science is full of hands on labs that allow students to do cool shit in "real-life". Don't misunderstand me; these subjects are not being perfectly taught everywhere, and certainly have their share of challenges as well. However, it doesn't seem to me that any of these subjects face quite the same challenge math does. 

Math is a great subject. In high school, I hated it.  Until I took calculus senior year, math was easily my least favorite subject in school. (Senior year it was possibly my second least favorite.) It made me feel inadequate. I was surrounded by adults who kept telling me the importance of mathematics and how I had to "do well" in math to succeed in life. I realize now how much bullshit I was being fed. My mathematics education failed me. Here is my solution to that problem. 

One does not need to be versed in the finer points of calculus to lead a productive, successful, and happy life. There is a basic, working understanding of how mathematics is applied in the world that is crucial, yes. That point I concede with no argument. However, the idea that every high school student in America needs to be in a track to get them to calculus is ludicrous. A productive citizen will need an understanding of arithmetic. This is useful in general accounting, understanding pay stubs, navigating taxes, and so on. A certain logical literacy will also go far in forming science-iterate humans. Members of society who can know if a claim made by a source is legitimate or bullshit by applying some logic, and basic mathematical and scientific principles. This, is crucial. 

That said, the things that are being taught in math class now are useless to 95% or more of the students. At this point, several of you reading this will cry out. "But what about learning how to learn?" You're right, sort of. Yes, part of being in mandatory grade-school is to learn how to learn. To a certain extent, college is as well. The amount of people I have worked with who used their college degree for its intended purpose is much smaller than the number who have gone on and found meaningful work in entirely unrelated fields. I think we would agree that part of the job of the education system in this country is to cultivate a working knowledge of how to learn. However, it can be done in a way that is not mind-numbing, demoralizing, and in any other way useless to those students.

Students can learn how to learn while also learning useful applicable life skills in any subject. History and Language are very applicable to any human-being alive today. A citizen in any society would benefit from having knowledge of the history of the people, the land, and generally how they are in the predicaments of the present day. In the same vain, without language none of this would be possible. 

In mathematics, I believe we have the whole system backwards. Yes, there are students who need to be pushed through the most rigorous courses, because without engineers, scientists, and mathematicians, society as a whole would certainly be left for worse. In addition, though, we need citizens who, while they might not be at the mathematical level of an engineer, do not leave high school hating the subject with their guts. While they might not "succeed" in a traditionally rigorous mathematics curriculum, they need to have a working knowledge of arithmetic and logic, and they must not abhor any problem that in any way relates to math. 

In this light, I propose a new way of thinking about mathematics education that serves all students. Applied mathematics can not continue to retain the pretense that it is for the "slow kids" or the ones who won't ever succeed. The idea that college is required for success as a human being must be dropped from the education system. Instead of a mandatory Math 1, Math 2, Math 3 system, take the ideas from Math I, and then offer a range of applied mathematics courses. Mathematics of various industries. A course in how to apply logic to the world around you. Problem solving courses. Mathematics of growing food. Mathematics of carpentry. Money management. Home economics. The list goes on.

Applied Mathematics should be the fun courses. These should be full of students who might actually be interested. Mathematics is a vessel that can, and should, be used to prepare students for real life. It can prepare students to be self-reliant. To truly understand more of the world around them. For thew few that go on to engineering fields, it will look very similar to how it looks now. For everyone else, it must look different.