Ever since I was knee high to a mockingbird, I’ve been
reading about the lamentable state of American innumeracy. Seems like we
Americans, unlike Koreans, Finns, and Albanians, just can’t find our way in
even the lower mathematics. Many theories have been advanced. Many studies, at
great expense, have been launched.
Well, I was sitting out at the playground today, watching
Adam and other kids and parents, and it struck me that it might have something
to do with the way us parents threaten.
More specifically, the way we say: I’m going to count to five and you
better get in your seat, eat your dinner, get off the jungle gym, etc.
Nobody ever says, I’m going to go to “e”.
It is perhaps for this reason that the alphabet really does
seem composed of friendly little mountaineers, each with its little hammer, all
of them climbing up one after the other the cliff face of language. Whereas
numbers always have the whiff of the disciplinarian, as if they all waved
rulers at us threateningly.
To prove my theory, I’d only need a couple of million
dollars from Zuckerberg or Gates or one of the other billionaires. I would
raise three groups of kids, one threatened, traditionally, with numeration, one
with the alphabet (I’m going to go to e, and you better be over here: a b c d
e) and one raised with varied threats (I’m going to go to mo and you better get
over here -eenie meenie minee mo; or, I’m
going to go to paper and you better get off that jungle gym – rock scissors
paper). Then we’d overload these children with various repeititive and
intrusive tests and find out whether the alphabet menaced read at a lower level
than the number menaced, and so on.
I’m getting on the phone to the Ford foundation tomorrow.
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