Professor Andrew Hacker (Amherst BA, Princeton PhD)
Prove: (x2+y2)2=
(x2-y2)2+(2xy)2
Should every doctor be able to solve this problem? Should every doctor who is admitted to Harvard Medical School or Johns Hopkins be able to solve this problem? Should every freshman admitted to college be able to solve this problem?
Should every graduate of Rice University be able to solve this problem?
Should a talented 17 year old, who writes well, whose analysis of Thoreau is breathtaking, be able to solve this problem, if he wants to go to Harvard? Would Sylvia Plath have been able to solve this problem? Or Katherine Anne Porter? Or F. Scott Fitzgerald?
Writing in the Sunday New York Times today, Andrew Hacker makes the case that the math is being A/ Taught incorrectly, i.e. too abstractly B/ Used to flunk out worthy students and this is harmful to the national economy, to individual lives, to American industry and to American education.
He uses algebra as his illustration, but he eventually gets around to an even more egregious example: calculus--which has been thrown in front of generations of aspiring pre medical students--as another case in point of a totally meaningless hurdle placed to discourage, to narrow the field rather than to actually identify people with the right stuff.
We have been selecting out exactly the people with the wrong stuff for decades, discouraging people who would make really good doctors, lawyers and welders by making them prove themselves at irrelevant tasks.
It is as if we have been selecting a football team or a baseball team by making everyone pole vault over 16 feet. Anyone who do this is not on the team. Of course, coaches would never be idiotic enough to eliminate everyone who cannot pole vault: They are looking for other attributes which are more relevant to each position on the team.
But Harvard et al have been, for years, cutting everyone from consideration who cannot score above 700 on the math portion of the SAT--anyone who is not able to vault over quadratic equations is not invited to be on the team.
"Meritocracy" implies the selection process looks not for family ties, nor for race nor for money but for merit, and the very institutions in America which ought to know how to analyze for merit have failed at this task for decades.
Well, not every part of the those institutions: The football coaches know merit when they see it. Ironically, the one part of the university which does not really belong at a university, the football program, has been better at assessing real talent, at defining scientifically exactly what characteristics constitute "talent" than the parts of the university whose business it is to select for academic talent.
Well, not every part of the those institutions: The football coaches know merit when they see it. Ironically, the one part of the university which does not really belong at a university, the football program, has been better at assessing real talent, at defining scientifically exactly what characteristics constitute "talent" than the parts of the university whose business it is to select for academic talent.
It's Moneyball in action.
Remember Moneyball? The whole idea of that work was that "talent scouts" had for years been bad at what they were being paid to do. They were looking for the wrong attributes of merit. When someone actually took the time and invested the effort into figuring out what made a player successful and valuable to a team, they started drafting entirely different sorts of players.
But why should the Ivy League change its practices? They are smug and fat. Same for medical schools--people are banging at their doors. Why change, just because you could actually improve what you do?
Because, we are in a world economy now, and the Japanese or the Chinese will eat our lunch, once they figure out what real talent is and how to identify it.
Sure as hell we will not.
Sigh... A Modest Proposal, Brave New World... And to top it all , the equation is incorrect. Andrew Hacker got everybody, hook line and sinker. This is the 80th anniversary of Brave New World.
ReplyDeleteIf the equation is incorrect, the fault lies with me and not with Dr. Hacker, but of course, this is irrelevant. The point being equations like this really do not matter, except to those few to whom they matter, and those few should not rule.
ReplyDeleteI'm missing the Brave New World aspect.
Hacker has been attacked for "anti intellectualism" for this article, but nothing could be more distant from the truth.
There is an unholy alliance between those who are in love with all aspects of math, math theory and parts of math for which most of us have no use, and they have managed to get the ear of people with the power to determine the fates of broad ranges of students and tomorrow's doctors, lawyers and engineers. The fault lies not with the math professors for trying to sell their love; the fault is with those idiots in positions of power who bought it, hook, line and sinkere.
--The Phantom
Actually, it is hard to imagine how I missed that equation thing, looking at it now. (Actually, that's the way it appears in the Times. Apparently, their Yale educated editors missed it, too.) You've got the extra (2xy2)just sitting there. And I actually had no trouble at all with algebra in school: what is on one side of the equation, ipso facto, has to equal what is on the other, even it it looks different.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the point remains: Solving omplicated equations having little meaning beyond math class is an exercise which may be wonderful mental exercise, but clearly is not necessary to life in the real world and should not constitute a barrier any more than learning Latin and Greek or memorizing the Kreb's cycle.
I did use algebra all the time on the wards: Before computers and calculators were available you had to give a person a drug as 20 mg but the drug in the bottle was 40 mg/ml, so how many ml do you have to give to give him 20 mg? Stuff like that. You'd see nurses and medical students and interns doing little equations on paper towels. But that sort of algebra you can learn in a week and everyone gets an "A" on that. What you got taught by math teachers was stuff you could not and would never need to use.
--The Phantom