Math

In the first grade, I consistently scored 100’s on those 1-minute math drills for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.  I racked up a lot of gold stars. In the 5th grade, I did a research paper on Darwin. Darwin! I don’t remember if I picked that topic or if I drew the short straw on the list of available topics. Nevertheless, I DO remember reading many books that were way over my head and yet, somehow, still getting an A on that report.

Things changed in high school. In the ninth grade, I failed one 9-week period of biology and wound up the year with a C- for the course. In 11th grade, I faced my final exam in pre-calculus with an overall grade of a 69 – one point shy of a D. [I will say, as a somewhat legitimate excuse, I missed six weeks of classes due to mono in that grade. In pre-calc, that translated to ALL of the trigonometry instruction, the only exposure I had to that]. With tutoring from Robin (friend at the time), and Aaron (beau at the time), and the teacher, I somehow managed to not only pass that class with a B, I got a 92 on the final exam. I remember Mrs. Roach coming around with her grade book to show us our scores, placing the book on my desk, pointing to the numbers and saying, “Why haven’t you been doing this?” I credited divine intervention.

Senior year was calculus. I had signed on for that through my counselor (remember them??) before things went badly the year before, and after my miraculous recovery at the last second, I decided I might be able to make it through after all. I was wrong. Three weeks in, I was standing outside our classroom, waiting for the Algebra II class to clear out, telling David Bains, Matthew Knaub and 2 other friends that I was dropping the course. Derivatives were beyond me and I needed to bail before I failed. Needing nothing else to graduate, I picked up a study hall.

I was perfectly fine stepping away from calculus knowing that those staying behind had it covered. Not that I thought calculus was a crucial skill for survival in this world, but I knew that if I ever needed derivatives in the future, I had several people who could help me live to see another day. Truth be told, I married one of those people, so all I really have to do now is look across the table.

The last few weeks, I’ve become embroiled in discussions over math – a topic I demonstrably have not always been great at. But what I currently see is a failure to understand simple math – multiplication, division, percentages, basic statistics. It’s the reason that people are floating ludicrous theories about the coronavirus only killing .017 percent of the people it infects. (If you’re confused about how they’re arriving at those numbers, ask me – I finally get it)

I’m sure this was true when I was younger as well, but it seems to me that so many people now don’t even understand that they don’t understand. To an even greater degree, they can’t acknowledge that the people who have made it their career to understand these things might have something of value for them to understand. They cannot, or will not, look across the table to anyone.

I’m not sure when we lost that. When we, as individuals and as a country, decided we either were right or had to be right about everything. But it seems to be what’s making our country unique in this pandemic. Thousands of people have died and are dying because of willful ignorance and pride in ability and knowledge that does not exist; meanwhile, those who have better answers are silenced, belittled, ignored or banned from the table all-together.

It’s not that I haven’t done this myself: I have. I have feigned knowledge so as not to look uninformed, or ill-informed, or memory-compromised. I’ve sworn I read a book because I assumed I should have read it. We all believe we should know it all and we have a hard time admitting that we don’t. But it’s time we started being able to do that. In fact, it’s past time – far past it.

139,189 deaths – and counting…