Green & White Awards
Head of School Remarks (excerpt)
As students in my government class will tell you, I love data charts and polls. In fact, every single day at 5 a.m., I receive an email that includes about 40 new data charts and polls. It’s the first thing I read in the morning, and nearly every day, I discover a new and fascinating piece of economic, political, or social data. Did you know that in 1983, 43% of 16 year-olds had a driver’s license; in 2019, it’s only 16%. Or that there were 485 Tornadoes during May of this year versus the 10-year average in May, which is 270. Or that last year Americans spent $69 Billion dollars on their pets.
But there is one recent data chart that, like a KidzBop song, will not escape my brain. The following question was asked to a group of Americans: Should we be teaching Arabic numerals in schools? Let me give you a second to ponder your answer to this question. Of those polled, 23% (one out of four), said YES; 20% (one out of five) responded with either I don’t know, or that mushy answer, no opinion; while fully 57% (nearly 6 out of 10) answered NO—we should NOT be teaching Arabic numerals in our schools. So after absorbing this question, it made me think: should we be teaching Arabic numerals at Gunston?
So I first tried to reason why 57% of people have such a clear opinion against this. Maybe some people just hate Math and have their hands full with English numerals; maybe others are worried about adding yet ANOTHER item onto a very crowded school syllabus; and yes, let’s be honest here, some responses are driven by anti-Islamic prejudice, reasoning that if we teach Arabic numerals to our students, we might soon find ourselves on a slippery slope towards Sharia Law.
But then I considered the flip side. 25% of people were strongly FOR teaching Arabic numerals. These folks must be either true Math lovers or ardent multiculturalists, or both. Frankly, I was stumped, and as I considered my own answer, I was reminded of Mark Twain, who said: “Sometimes it’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and erase all doubt.”
So round and round this question revolved in my mind until, all of a sudden, something got knocked loose in my memory. It was something Miss Biedron, yes, Miss Biedron—my 10th-grade Algebra II teacher told me. She taught us the Arabic numerals for 1, 2, 3, 4—and so on. As you can see here in the field house, these numbers are all around us. We already use Arabic numerals!
Yes, it was Miss Biedron who, in 10th grade, shared how, in the 1200’s the Europeans and Chinese, through the opening of Silk Road trade routes, begin adopting the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. Thanks to its incorporation of that clever number zero, using only 10-digits, and creating a positional system framework—we vastly simplified our capacity to enumerate and calculate.
By the way, when you ask this question to someone who already knows that we use Arabic numerals in schools, they will usually burst out laughing, as my father in law did. “No,” he said to me in his vivid New York accent, “I think we should go back to Roman numerals! Or calculate like the Mayans, who had to carve a new glyph for every number!”
So I trust that you have come to the realization that the question—Should we teach Arabic numerals in school?—was really asking this question: What percentage of people, when presented with new and unfamiliar information, will jump to knee-jerk and ill-informed conclusions?
Alas, there seems to be an answer here: 57% of people would rather give an ill-informed answer than admit their ignorance! To be fair, perhaps I should acknowledge the small percentage of people, like Ms. Ferguson or James Pratt, who might make a principled stand for a return to Roman Numerals, but I imagine that club is small.
I share this story Seniors, because you are preparing to enter a part of your life, college, where nearly every day, you will be presented with new knowledge and information that will challenge your preexisting beliefs; where you will be encountering the unfamiliar, and where the question being posed to you might be much more deceptive than you initially think it is.
Thus, as one of the last official acts as your Head of School, I would like to grant you permission—from now through the rest of your life—when you encounter a question like the one posed to you this morning—should you not know the answer—to give one of the following responses: I don’t know. Let me think about that. I don’t have enough information. Let me research that. Wait, explain to me what x (in this case Arabic numerals) is. Or, a personal favorite: So what do you think?
When you enter college with the mindset that there are no easy or simple answers to most of life’s questions, you will find the experience vastly more exciting and enriching, and avoid thinking traps like the one presented today. Indeed, it was again Mark Twain who said—in one of my favorite quotes ever: “It ain’t the things we don’t know that gets us in trouble. It’s the things we think are certain, but just ain’t so.”
Class of 2019, it has been a privilege to work with you, and you have conducted yourselves with class, camaraderie, and grace during your time here. On behalf of everyone in this room, we wish you the best!