Growing up, one of my earliest memories in school is playing with toy currency. This was a clever way to teach kids how to add and subtract in a way that (at least to me) was fun—it’s toy coins and bills!—and useful. Now, with contactless pay becoming ever more common, it seems the usefulness of calculating change has mostly run its course, unless you find yourself paying in cash — which still comes with a discount in many places, so it’s not that useless!
Anyway, this anecdote is just one small example of how math literacy has declined due to technological advances in recent decades. With computers capable of making calculations quickly and accurately, why should humans have to crunch the numbers? We have seen this in even more pronounced form with AI, with companies like OpenAI and Anthropic announcing solutions to a slew of challenging problems that have eluded expert mathematicians for decades — though it’s crucial to note that these AI agents were trained extensively on the incredible mathematical advances made by human researchers.
More than that, efforts to improve math education have struggled. There’s been a lot written about reading crises as social media and video content have become so prevalent, but scores for 13-year-olds on the National Assessment of Educational Progress have been on the decline since 2012. Scores for 9-year-olds in mathematics have recovered slightly since a sharp drop right after the COVID pandemic, but disparities still exist as minority groups and students from lower-income families continue to score lower on exams.
With such difficulties in reforming primary education, and the increasing prevalence of AI tools, my worry is that math literacy will wane over time. While my meager words can’t reshape the future on their own, I do want to articulate what I see as more positive steps that we should adopt.
First, in the short term, we should take a stand against rote use of AI in performing mathematics. I know that people even in STEM fields bristle when they have to do a lot of mathematics — even I will bristle at problems I know can be highly technical or involve a lot of bookkeeping that isn’t necessarily the most challenging but is certainly tedious. But working through these problems allows us to really understand what the math is, and think critically through even the most abstract of problems. This kind of critical thinking is vital for pretty much any field, and is an immensely fulfilling aspect of the human experience, one that we should never cede to AI agents.
Then, in the longer term, I think it’s important for us to remember what helped us understand math, so that we can explain it to others. Not all of us will want to become teachers, but we can nevertheless play a positive role as expert STEM communicators, providing novel and exciting ways of thinking about mathematics and related fields. This really helps educators at all levels — they can point to real-world, human-driven advances and stories to share with the next generation of learners.
Finally, as the midterm elections near, vote to ensure elected officials continue to prioritize schools. Do your research, and keep education as a topic on your mind when considering which candidates you want to support. While it might seem like a small issue compared to the many other pressing issues in this election cycle, continued support in education ensures that kids grow up with educational experiences at least as good as, if not even better than, yours.
This isn’t something that can be fixed all at once, but each day you can make an effort to continue your education with perseverance, creativity, and collaboration with friends and colleagues. With this combination, I am confident that over time, you will find that the learning process engenders the excitement of a kindergartener from the early 2000s playing with toy money for the first time.
