A question that is starting to appear more often in society is, “Why do students learn math in high school?” After all, most math that is used in everyday life is taught in middle school, such as percentages, decimals, and multi-digit multiplication.
The point presents itself: why learn something that is seemingly useless to the future? Surely, most people do not spend their days solving situations with multiple variables or measuring and identifying the angles and sizes of their living spaces. And with the convenience of the cell phone, a calculator is n at a person’s finger tips for any math needed.
While the lack of common use of complex ideas may be accurate, teachers have revealed that the reason is not in the use of math itself, but what it does to the brain. “High school math refines the skills that you learn as middle as math into more abstract algebraic ideas,” Amy Buot, an Algebra I teacher at McNicholas states.
An experiment conducted by Michael Handel from 2004-2006 and 2007-2009 revealed that out of 2,300 American workers, only 22% use high school-taught math. That is very little when compared to the 68% that said they use fractions, the 78% that use division, and 86% that use subtraction.
“Logical thinking is vital, especially to adult life,” Buot states. “In high school math, a lot of it becomes more logical thinking that is used for many different careers.”
Studies of workplaces and interviews with CEOs have also shown that logical thinking is typically the main skill employers look for, as it makes the potential employee stand out if they are able to think differently reasonably and responsibly from the rest of the candidates for the job.
Buot states, “Managing life involves some logical skills. Doing algebraic ideas; it all follows a logical sequence pattern.”
Math is necessary to this idea because it influences and advances the brain because of the patterns used to solve groups of problems that the brain subconsciously notices soothe brain can grow stronger based on the information it receives.
The other point brought up is that math ends up being a part of every career in some way, as Buot states, “Any research profession eventually leads to having some statistical component to it.”
This means math is vital to the high school curriculum because the material makes people’s brains stronger and more efficient in logical thinking, which opens more opportunities for their futures. Even Albert Einstein himself said, “Mathematics is, in its own way, the poetry of logical ideas.”
The McNicholas Milestone 