In a competitive global market, careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) are continuing their meteoric rise in strategic importance, making America’s long-documented math phobia more of a liability than ever. If math-capable students shy away from careers involving calculation and computation, that weakens the U.S. workforce and hurts its position in a global economy.
Americans Need to Get Over Their Fear of Math
As STEM jobs multiply, dealing with numbers will become more important.
October 23, 2019
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Summary.
America’s math phobia is a liability. As jobs in careers in science, technology, engineering, and math become increasingly important, the U.S. will not be able to compete if it doesn’t address the fact that 93% of Americans report experiencing some level of math anxiety. This starts in schools. Colleges should require that all students take courses that push them to think empirically with data, regardless of their major. Employers play a role too. They can encourage and be open to having students with diverse educational interests in their STEM-related internships. Don’t only seek out the computer science majors. This means potentially taking a student who doesn’t come with all the computation chops in hand, but with a good attitude and a willingness to learn. Colleges and employers alike should be consistently offering advanced math and computational training as part of career development, particularly for those who profess to be most anxious about it. Finally, we need to reject the social acceptability of being bad at math. Many people think math ability is an immutable trait, but evidence clearly shows this is a subject in which we can all learn and succeed.