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EdSurge
Reading, Writing and... AI Literacy? Conrad Wolfram Wants to ‘Fix’ Math Education
By Jeffrey R. Young
Jun 9, 2020
Living through the COVID-19 pandemic requires some serious math
literacy. There’s a daily dose of statistics on the number of new
cases, and constant talk of “flattening the curve” of infections.
But the education system has done a terrible job preparing us to live
in a world where such number crunching is more important than ever,
according to Conrad Wolfram, co-founder of Wolfram Research Europe. He
has a new book out this week called “The Math Fix: An Education
Blueprint for the AI Age.” In it, he proposes a new way for schools and
colleges to rethink everything in math education—about what even needs
to be taught and why.
It may not seem like the best time to quibble about curriculum, with so
much of education disrupted with the sudden shift to remote teaching.
But he argues that this is exactly the right moment for fixing math.
After all, the pandemic is forcing some serious reflections about
what’s really essential teaching in schools and colleges. And people
are taking a fresh look at the question of whether everyone is getting
education fairly.
Wolfram is steeped in math tools. Wolfram Research is a powerhouse of
mathematics software, making Mathematica, which is used by scientists,
and Wolfram Alpha, a kind of search engine for quantitative information
that they call a “computational knowledge engine.”
He says the way math is taught these days feels about as relevant as Latin.
“It seems extraordinary now, but in the 1950s, if you went to an
intellectual school in the U.K. for example, a grammar school or
private school, Latin took up a huge amount of your daily or weekly
schedule at school,” he said. “Latin fell off a cliff because it
couldn’t justify itself as a mainstream subject. And I think math has
problems like that at the moment, if you’re not careful.”
For instance, he asked: “Why are we spending ages showing people how to
do quadratic equations by hand” when students today need a different
kind of algorithmic literacy in order to navigate a world shaped by
social media giants like Facebook and Google?
This article is part of an EdSurge podcast. To listen to the podcast, click here
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