Over smoothies last week, my friend’s 12 year old daughter says to me, “I told my teacher I don’t know why we need to know this stuff when I can just use a calculator or Google it or whatever.” It was a relevant point destined to be heard by anyone with a school age child taking a math class.
The underlying question is reasonable to ask… why do I have to learn this stuff that is so useless and irrelevant to my life? Well-meaning parents might say things about needing to know math to complete taxes or create a household budget. But the truth is, it’s probably safer and wiser to use a calculator or app for those types of tasks to eliminate potentially devastating errors. Some parents will say they use Algebra everyday in their jobs as Engineers, etc, and when they do, you can just see a child mentally scratching that occupation off a list of potential future professions.
When explaining the value of Algebra to the skeptical student, one sensible approach rests in the larger framework of the Liberal Arts education. Algebra is a valuable and unique way of thinking that solves problems and explains how you arrived at that solution. One of the most basic characteristics of the Liberal Arts education rests on having a variety of tools at hand to prove the truth of a thing.
For example, in Language Arts, we ask students to write a 5 paragraph essay that makes a claim or takes a stand in the thesis. The writer then proceeds to offer examples and analysis to prove that the thesis is true and relevant. What would happen if a student turned in an essay that failed to explain the thesis or provide support to prove its validity? The essay would receive an F. The same thing would happen on an Algebra assignment if a student did not show his or her work, as they haven’t proved a thing.
Also in Science, we ask students to use the scientific method, or objective steps to prove the truth of their results when experimenting. They must make a hypothesis, devise tests and analyze results, which is a similar process to the 5 paragraph essay in how information must be proved either right or wrong.
In Studio Art, we ask students to express a truth in visual terms, in images and colors and lines. Pablo Picasso’s Guernica is an excellent example of a visual depiction of a truth, the suffering of communities in war proven with broken, splintered bodies, and colorlessness, as though all joy and vibrancy has faded from the world.
Consequently, we can see the underlying theme that runs through all academic disciplines in the Liberal Arts education. Algebra is similar to the aforementioned disciplines in the sense that it too is a specific way to demonstrate and explain a truth by “showing your work,” the mantra of all elementary and secondary math teachers. Just as the visual representation of lines and tones in Guernica generates a way to understand war, Algebra too generates ways to understand things about our world.
For a specific Algebraic example, let’s consider the simple task of evaluating an expression with one variable. We implement a specific set of rules, (remember Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally?) to essentially reverse engineer a solution. One uses inverse operations to determine the value of the variable, a process that is transferrable to solving many different types of problems. Why did my souffle collapse? Back through your steps until you determine where you went wrong. Where did I leave my cell phone? Retrace your steps until you find it.
Must we know Algebra to fix a souffle or find where we left our phones? Not likely. But we do need it to solve more complex issues humanity faces. Regardless of the particular academic discipline, the Liberal Arts education aims to develop a mind that can analyze different types of data, and creatively prove a truth. And having the ability to think in many different ways, scientifically, artistically, algebraically, strengthens a community and advances the problem solving capacity of a race fraught with problems.
