Old Math – New Math – No Math

If you follow this blog regularly, you know that I am a semi-geezer who is chiseled from the stone of another era. I have a strong reverence for the 1950’s and 1960’s which polished my rough facets into a finished urban American.

I come from a time when the Three R’s were standard fare in public schools and I have benefited greatly from my education. While all three are woefully lacking in today’s education system, it is the third R – ‘rithmatic that seems to have been completely lost in its various manifestations over the years.

As you have probably guessed, I hail from a time when math was the old math: You know, the kind that made sense and was actually used on a daily basis. I was once a paperboy some six decades ago and I remember being able to make change for any dollar amount without employing a calculator or cell phone. It was pretty basic stuff actually! I have gone through life using my old math just fine. I can use basic algebra and trigonometry to build things, figure the mileage in my car and just about any other task that requires math. I am a poster child for the old math.

When my son was in school, the dawn of the new math was upon us. I learned it as well, mainly to correct homework but also to maintain my mind up to date. After all, no one wants to have a brain with an expiration date that has been exceeded. I was okay with both old math and new math but I practiced the antique version more out of habit than anything else.

And then a strange thing happened. As the years progressed, I noticed that young people working as cashiers in markets and stores had become completely bereft of math skills. I once gave a stunned youngster a ten dollar bill and 16 cents for a purchase that came to $4.16 and was met with a vacuous stare for over a minute. Finally, the youth queried, “What are you doing dude?” The fact that I am not a dude aside, I gently explained that I was trying to make the transaction simpler so he could just give me back bills sans the change. Youth interrupted still didn’t get what I was doing so I finally gasped, “Christ, just give me six bucks!” He immediately complied but in such a manner as to convince me I could have asked for 50 bucks and it would have been the same to him.

This scene was repeated many, many times over the years to the point where I now don’t want to embarrass anyone so I just hand them a bill and wait for them to have the computerized cash register figure it all out for them. My pockets have become heavier in the process and I am still at a loss as to what happened to math in our world.

Occasionally I will be greeted by a cashier roughly my age. After all in today’s world people have to world into their eighties just to stay alive. With a knowing wink and a nod, I will slip them the even change. They make the transaction correctly and sometimes say, “Oh, you took the old math too!”

We’ve gone from old math to new math to no math. How would one ever compute the ratio of Facebook friends to phone contacts? As this old mather would say: Bummer!

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Read author Allen E. Rizzi’s latest books available at Amazon.com