Adding Fractions

A teacher’s union president can’t add simple fractions (from the New York Daily News):

The radio audience was live and the question for teachers union president Randi Weingarten involved sixth-grade math: “What’s 1/3rd plus 1/4th?"

Weingarten, however, is a not a sixth-grader or a math teacher. She’s a lawyer and a union boss who once taught high school social studies - and no one told her there was going to be a quiz.

"I would actually have to do it on paper,” she said when asked yesterday to complete the math problem on WNYC’s “Brian Lehrer Show” where she was a guest.

Mike Pesca, who was filling in for Lehrer, introduced the show’s education topic by saying American college grads can’t do basic math while high school grads in Canada and middle-schoolers in India have no trouble.

After Weingarten stumbled, another guest quickly produced the correct answer: 7/12ths, leaving Weingarten to explain herself.

I’m not surprised by this in the slightest, but it’s still very disappointing. As the story goes on to report, many people would not only be unsurprised, they’d be uncritical.

Not me.

This very American attitude about education makes me fear for our country’s future. Adding fractions is a terrific example of a very basic mathematics skill. One could also find many examples of basic science and technology skills where sampling a broad population — including professionals and college graduates — would reveal similar general ignorance amongst Americans. In many parts of the world, such a result would be almost unimaginable, and … shameful. But not here, for some reason I simply cannot fathom.

I fear that in 10, 20, or 30 years, the pool of talent that drives our math, science, and technology will have shifted so that it lies largely outside the U.S. — and that we will suffer the severe economic consequences (and derived political consequences) of that shift.

I’d sure like to be wrong on this one, but I don’t think I am…