Wayne Bishop’s observations on the Aspen Ideas Festival session, “Is Math Important?”

Editors’ Note:

David Leonhardt is Washington Bureau Chief for the New York Times, won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on economic issues, and majored in applied mathematics as an undergraduate at Yale. Mr. Leonhardt chaired the panel, “Deep Dive: Is Math Important?” an “event” in the program track “The Beauty of Mathematics”. Other program track events included individual lectures from each of the panelists.

Mathematicians might consider the panel composition rather odd, and ideologically one-sided. Three panelists are not mathematicians, but are wholehearted believers in constructivist approaches to math education, often derided as “fuzzy math”. Two of them claim, ludicrously, that high-achieving East Asian countries teach math their way. The aforementioned panelists are: journalist Elizabeth Green, education professor Jo Boaler, and College Board’s David Coleman, with a degree in English lit and classical philosophy. When only one side is allowed to talk, of course, it can make any claims it likes.

Watch for yourself: Aspen Ideas Festival: Deep Dive: Is Math Important?

https://video.pbs.org/video/2365521689/

Professor Bishop’s essay, written in the form of a letter to David Leonhardt, can be found here.
https://nonpartisaneducation.org/Review/Essays/v11n1.pdf