Math Class.

You either love it or you hate it, right? But let me me ask you this: why is it okay for someone to "not be a math person". No one would ever dream of believing that it's okay to not know how to read. In this country, it's perfectly acceptable not be good at math. But I take serious issue with that idea. Math literacy is a critical cornerstone of our lives, along with reading. If we were really a math literate society, would people personally be in so much debt? Would voters think it's okay for the government to be massively in debt? Would potential homeowners think it was okay to take out really really big loans?

So maybe math literacy can't solve all the world's problems. But just as books and print-literacy are powerful tools to mobilize people for social change, I think math can be that kind of tool too.

This semester I'm taking the majority of my curriculum and instruction courses, including Curriculum and Instruction for Math and Science. Prior to the class, we wrote reflections on our own math experience in school. I happened to have fabulous experiences with math in K-12 classes. I actually looked forward to math homework. I loved the process of problem solving and figuring out the answer. The moment of transition between being frustrated with a problem and solving it was awesome. I still have the calculus book that I won for having the top grade in the class. I worked hard for that grade.

But something happened when I went to college and suddenly math was "too hard." I was intimated by the math and science geniuses that geeked out on math even more than I did. Thus ended my love affair with math...until a year ago when I started tutoring a 4th and 6th grader. I love Algebra. I think it's fabulous.

However, when we discussed our reflections in class, many of the women in the class felt isolated from math in middle and high school, as if it was a subject for boys. That's part of the math-literacy problem. People think it's okay for certain groups to not be good at math. Our professor showed us this clip from Youtube of just how normalized this bias is. Watch it, and then do me one favor: Don't ever tell anyone, especially a young mind, that it's okay to not be a math person. You're giving them an excuse to give up on a tool that could change their lives (or at the very least keep them out of debt).