Why is it that you, without embarrassment, publish the fact that 70% of the staff of your Washington office can’t perform simple arithmetic? One can go into virtually any office and find someone who will freely admit that ‘I can’t do math.’
— John C. Nelson, in a letter to the Wall Street Journal
“I can’t do math.” It’s probably one of the most common statements I hear as a teacher, and it would be difficult for me to come up with a statement that irritates me more (although saying “my bad” when you mean “my mistake” comes close). It is especially irritating because the person who says it invariably sounds happy and content with this assertion of inability. And it isn’t merely students; last year, I sat in a meeting while four Tennessee Wesleyan College personnel smiled cheerfully and told me one after the other that they couldn’t “do” math.
Stating that you can’t “do” math, it seems to me, is roughly equivalent to stating that you can’t read and can’t write. And while illiteracy is a serious concern (according to a 1993 report from the U.S. Department of Education, about 23% of all citizens of the United States are functionally illiterate), you are not likely to find many college students (or college personnel, for that matter) bragging with a grin that they can’t read a sentence or write their own name. And if someone told you that they couldn’t “do” history, you probably wouldn’t pat them on the head and say, “There, there, I can’t do history, either.” But this is exactly what happens in mathematics.