Math Adds Up to Life’s Biggest Problem

We all know we will never need the math we studied in school. Math is something they made us study because school is designed to torture the young.

And only by torturing the young do we prepare them for real life.

I am out at one of those discount shopping malls, one based on the concept that people will burn $10 worth of gasoline driving to a place where they can save $7 on a pair of shoes.

Which is why I am there. I have found my shoes and only one woman is ahead of me in line. The woman has found a scuffed pair of shoes and is asking the girl behind the counter if she can get a bigger discount.

The girl is wearing a name tag that says “Jeanne” and she cannot be more than 15. She picks up the phone and talks to the manager and then puts down the phone.

“He says you get 10% off,” Jeanne says.

“That’s fine,” says the woman.

Now Jeanne begins rummaging under the counter, pulling things from a shelf down there and piling them up on the countertop: scissors, a ball of string, papers, rubber bands, invoice books.

“There’s no calculator,” Jeanne finally says in a voice close to tears. “There’s s’posed to be a calculator. I can’t do 10% in my head.”

The woman waiting for the 10% discount stands there. I stand there.

“Barry,” Jeanne shouts over to the kid at the next counter, who looks about 16. “Do you have the calculator?”

“No,” Barry says, “I think Ray has it and he’s, like, spaced somewhere.”

Jeanne now sighs a big, stagey sigh and lets her shoulders slump. She pokes through the junk on the counter one more time. “I can’t do 10% in my head,” she says again.

The woman looks at her and then looks at me.

I should explain that I was never any good at math. My SAT scores in math were so low that during my college interviews the interviewers said things like, “Did you leave the room halfway through?” or “Are you sure you understood the concept of multiple choice?”

But I managed to get into college, anyway, and then I became an adult and, therefore, no longer needed math.

Except that as a reporter, I found I needed math all the time. I found I needed math on police stories: if the gunman entered the bank at 4:17 p.m. and the hostages were not released until 1:02 a.m, how long were they held captive?

I found I needed math on tax stories: If the average county tax bill was $3,334.47 last year and this year it’s $4,567.29, by what percentage did it increase?

I found I needed math, in fact, on all kinds of stories. So slowly and painfully I had to learn in real life what I had not learned in school.

Which is exactly what my teachers had told me. “Mr. Simon! If you don’t stop gazing out that window you will slowly and painfully have to learn some day what you are not learning right now!”

But who listened to teachers? If they were so smart, how come they weren’t making more money?

Today, I am no math wizard. But I can do 10% in my head.

Just like a whole bunch of you can. Depending on when you went to school, that is. If you went in the olden, low-tech days, they taught you such things. Today, school is much fancier.

“How much are the shoes?” I asked Jeanne.

“Uh, $28.86,” she said.

“So you give her $2.89 off,” I said.

“Really?” Jeanne said, as if I had, perhaps, chosen the numbers at random. “That’s excellent!” She turned to the woman. “Is that OK with you?”

The woman nodded. “Sounds right,” she said.

Jeanne rang up the discount--the cash register did the subtraction for her--and the woman walked off happy.

While Jeanne was ringing up my shoes, I talked to her.

You in high school? I asked.

“Sure,” Jeanne said, concentrating on the numbers she was punching.

“I’m not trying to make you feel bad or anything because I was lousy in math when I was in high school,” I said. “But don’t they teach you about decimals and percentages in school?”

“In school,” Jeanne said, “we get to use calculators.”

But of course they do. And why wouldn’t they? Machines will do everything for us, won’t they?

Perhaps there are still some schools that do not allow kids to use calculators. And in those schools I am sure every day the kids moan and whine and say: “Why do we have to learn this decimal junk? When we grow up, we’re going to use calculators anyway.”

And I know what teachers say back. They talk about the satisfaction of learning mathematical principles and the joy of conquering difficult concepts and the pride you can take in having mental tools that will last a lifetime.

But teachers should not bother saying such things.

Instead, they should tell the truth.

They should say: “You have to learn this stuff because some day Ray may walk off with the calculator and get absolutely spaced. “