How much math do we need to know?

Do young people really need to learn the four mathematical functions–addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division–in school? Perhaps they may not need this learning. Since it can all be done on a handheld calculator that can be bought for $5 or less, why bother with learning how it gets done?

This might, at first glance, seem anti-intellectual; don’t we want our schoolchildren to learn as much as we did? Well, maybe not. We had to learn these functions (those of us of around my age) because there were no calculators or computers to do them for us; but now we have these conveniences, so why worry about how they work?

I ask these questions because I tutor men in math and reading and writing at the Helping Up Mission in downtown Baltimore. This organization accepts men who have been brought down by drugs and/or alcohol and who are striving to recover themselves through a strict program of rehabilitation; the men whom I tutor are preparing to take the GED exam which, if passed, gives them a high-school diploma.

During this tutoring I am taken back to doing these math functions by longhand, something I haven’t done for years. I have to tell the men that they must learn the multiplication table by heart (something that I did in my early school years but have no recollection of doing) in order to perform these calculations in a straightforward way. (Some of them are clever enough to multiply 5 times 9 by writing the figure 9 five times and then adding 9 plus 9 equals 18, 18 plus 9 equals 27, etc. until they get to 45; others use their fingers to do the work.)

Another set of exercises that I help them with is adding or subtracting a series of fractions, such as 3 5/8 plus 6 2/5 plus 5 4/9; I had to stop and think how to do it–one finds a common denominator (in this case, 360) and proceeds to adjust the numerators, add them, and then reduce back to the least fraction. But, how often do most people have to do this exercise in their daily lives?

I recall when, as a teenager, I worked briefly in an A&P grocery store, where all of us who waited on customers would write the price of each item purchased on the brown paper bag that we put them in, and then add them up manually to get the total to collect from the customer; now supermarket cashiers scan the prices of each item.

It is at these times that I ask myself this question as to why anyone should have to go through this basic exercise when a calculator will do it for them. I pose the question in the realization that we all do many mundane things without knowing their inner workings. I have driven a car for over 60 years (skillfully, I think) without much knowledge of what goes on under the hood; I take pills prescribed by my doctors with almost no understanding of what is in them or how they work. (I have almost no understanding of what a Beta blocker is, or what an inhibitor inhibits, or what a corticosteroid is; I don’t take any of these, as far as I know, but I frequently see references to them.)

So, again, I ask the question, with considerable doubt as to the answer: should schoolchildren be put to the task of mastering the mathematical functions when their calculator will do it for them?