Education Week - March 11, 2020 - 20

"We are in

16

the middle
of an election
cycle already
imbued with
a post-truth
disregard
for facts."

The Danger of 'College for All'

Getty & Vanessa Solis/Education Week

17
School Counselors Need
Proper Training

Is Missing From Our Democracy

A
By Ismar Volić
VOLIĆ is a professor
of mathematics at
Wellesley College,
where he researches
topology-the abstract
math discipline
dedicated to the
properties of geometric
objects and shapes.
He teaches classes
and workshops in
mathematics and
politics to college and
high school students.

s a reward for its
recent good behavior, my daughter's
4th grade class was
preparing to vote on
an animated movie to
watch in class. And as
a mathematician and college professor with
a particular interest in how math plays a role
in political decisionmaking, I asked her to
share the results of the class vote with me. We
had recently been discussing different voting
methods and their merits at the dinner table,
and as my kids sometimes do when I wear my
professor hat at home, my daughter teased,
"You just want to see if we'll pick the movie
that's not most people's first choice, right?"
She was correct. And when she dutifully
reported the outcome from the class' vote
("Bolt" received eight votes; "Incredibles 2"
six; and "Coco" three) and informed me that
the class watched "Bolt" because it got the
most votes, I realized that the mathematical
deficits of plurality voting-a method we use
to elect so many of the people who represent
us, including our president-have an impact
on even the simplest decisions we make.
The good news is that opportunities for
teaching the critical role that math plays in
the American political system in a way that
resonates even with a 9-year-old abound. And
we need to create classroom experiences that
are conducive to this now more than ever.
Misleading statistics, sham metrics, cooked
numbers, and erroneous alternative science
herald a precipitous decline of rigorous
thinking, starting with the erosion and
weaponization of that rigor's foundation-
mathematics. One does not need to
understand math to use it for political gain,
for good or for evil. Politicians regularly toss

20 | EDUCATION WEEK | March 11 , 2020 | www.edweek.org/go/opinion

out numbers, such as how many immigrants
are crossing the border; the millions spent
on abortions at Planned Parenthood; the
trillions spent on the war in Afghanistan; the
percentage of wealth held by a fraction of our
population; and most recently, the scope of
the coronavirus outbreak.
Whether these numbers are manipulated,
fabricated, or real, both sides of the aisle
deploy them to elicit an emotional response
from us. This succeeds all too frequently
because relying on emotion and defaulting
to unquantifiable criteria-moral, religious,
and communal-to make decisions (or take
a position) is often easier than analyzing the
data, statistics, and numbers to do so. The
inability to scrutinize and distinguish between
bad and good math in political contexts is
detrimental to effective citizenship. Greater
numeracy leads to greater agency in political
decisionmaking and can make us better
consumers of democracy. As long as we are
fooled by unsubstantiated math or perplexed
by its rigor, our democracy is in peril.
The only substantive solution to this
problem is more education aimed at
cultivating political numeracy. My college
students are frequently incredulous that they
have not learned more about the math behind
some key democratic processes like voting,
the Electoral College, apportionment of
legislative seats, and gerrymandering.
This means that we are not doing a good
enough job in teaching our students about
subjects that have unparalleled importance
for democracy and occupy a unique place in
the intersection of mathematics, statistics,
computer science, political science, history,
and economics. For example, there is no
reason why mathematically superior ways
to vote, such as ranked-choice methods that

incorporate more information about voters'
preferences, should not be taught in our
schools. Ultimately, having this knowledge
would empower students to demand a better
voting system.
We also need mathematics education that
emphasizes political quantitative literacy-
the ability to examine and assess data and
statistical information in a political context.
We could achieve this by incorporating more
real-life examples from voting, taxation,
crime, climate change, or immigration in
scenarios that foster numerical and data skills
like statistical analysis or the assessment and
weighing of evidence in the context of politics
in our instruction.
This integrated mathematics and politics
education-one that teaches more about the
mathematics behind democratic processes,
and uses real-life political data-would
cultivate students' critical thinking because
of its interdisciplinary nature and the depth of
the issues it scrutinizes.
It would provide the tools to identify
political matters that should be tackled
mathematically, recognize when
mathematics is being misused for political
gain, demand mathematical rigor in politics,
and enact changes in the political system
based on sensible mathematical evidence.
We are in the middle of an election cycle
already imbued with a post-truth disregard
for facts. We can lament the deterioration
of informed participation in our democracy.
Or we can work to empower our kids (and
ourselves) by giving them the tools of
mathematical political literacy with which
they can transform politics and ensure that it
remains based in truth-the only place where
democracy thrives. It is never too early to
start. Just ask my 9-year-old daughter. n
http://www.edweek.org/go/opinion
Education Week - March 11, 2020

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