Is Math Worth the Sacrifice

For ages and ages, the question has been "Is there any necessity to learn math? I'll never use it in the real world. My desire is to be a fireman or a cowboy or a news reporter and they will never need to know how to do math. Today, with the existence of electronic devices and all sorts of electronic wonders which are skillfully operated by young children, we really have to ask ourselves a question. Why should a person learn the formulas and memorize the times tables they learn in class Why would it make sense to take any effort in working with formulas, and even worse, memorizing them, when the same result can be achieved with a calculator a zillion times faster? It seems like a valid question, and students ask it all the time

The answer to this question has some complexity, which goes a bit further the evident. It is obvious that no one enjoys memorizing just for the sake of memorizing; nevertheless, the basics is what is usually better learned at first. It is a possibility that presenting math in a different way, though, could radically enhance the understanding of why we study math.

Among the reasons why the study of math is necessary is that it creates the need for students to read and comprehend, which also encourages them to learn how to organize their cognitive processes and to see depth in more challenging problems. The best knowledge of formulas cannot tell you how to apply the formula. In order to achieve that, it is necessary to be able to put your thinking in action to recognize the important elements of a situation and secondly to understand how to apply known facts or procedures in order to find the answer to the question. This new found understanding, obtained from the practice in figuring out the parameters in a math problem also contributes in other fields of study.

In addition to the need to organize your thinking due to math, you will also be forced to come to understand the meaning of the formulas, in terms of knowing how to apply them. In short, unless you understand something about how math works, it won’t do any good to help with typing the numbers into the calculator. While the actual calculation performed by a calculator does greatly simplify even routine problem solving, to raise three generations of students with no understanding of how to use a calculator to establish which of two items in different sized containers costs more is a travesty of the concept of mathematics education. Many adults fail to understand the concept of reconciling a bank statement, or calculating true cost of an adjustable rate mortgage.

This problem is a daily situation for educators all around the globe. Standardized tests show a decrease in the math understanding of our students and the tendency doesn’t seem to get any signs of getting reverted in the short-run. Criticism of teachers for 'teaching to the test' wide and strong, but in the case of math, it is hard to see how logic and inductive reasoning which are required to solve most real life math problems can be considered teaching to the test.