Math is hard, But necessary

Re: “Don’t torture kids with math skills they’ll never use”, Opinion, Oct. 24

Just because Naomi Lakritz was lucky enough as a kid to know she would follow a career path that wouldn’t require math skills doesn’t justify abandoning teaching math concepts simply because they are “hard.” I’ve seen first-hand some of the failings of the “new math” education system and it started long before junior high school. English Lit is hard for some kids, too. Should we give up teaching the classics because they don’t understand the “gobbledygook” written by Shakespeare, Joyce or Kerouac?

In this age where we expect people to have several careers over their working lifetimes, we need to expose kids to all of these math (and English) concepts instead of pre-supposing we know what kids will need in their future endeavours.

As for Ms. Lakritz citing school board statistics to support her arguments for abandoning anything she considers impractical … the irony is too much.

Tim Winn, Calgary