Jo Boaler: How to Learn Math | Lex Fridman Podcast #226

Love the idea of learning through collaboration.

... I sometimes think of pure maths as logical fiction ... (I'm in maths so I'm not trying to be disrespectful here) ...

One day I will definitely learn math

Very good conversation. Thanks Jo and Lex.

Her work on the CMF in Cali is disturbing to say the least and she has been charging School Districts $5,000 an hour for her "expertise". Read the article below from the Stanford review.

For Jo Boaler, Professor of Mathematics Education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, criticism can be a touchy subject. In 2006, she actually left her post for multiple years after a mathematician, James Milgram, exposed the shoddy methodologies she used in her work. She returned to Stanford in 2010, and since then, her influence on public education policy in the United States — particularly in California — has grown considerably.

Recently, she has served as one of the authors of the California Math Framework (CMF), a document that will set the direction of math education for California’s millions of students for years to come. As Editor Emeritus Maxwell Meyer ‘22 wrote in Pirate Wires, the CMF is loaded with nonsense. Among other things, the CMF criticizes the “rush to calculus” and even the offering of algebra in middle school, which has been standard for decades. The CMF further promotes the use of several labor-union themed mathematics lessons, in which eighth-grade students are taught to advocate for a “living wage” and actually learn from union activists in the classroom.

One of the more controversial ideas propagated in the CMF is Boaler’s assertion that gifted children are a “myth.” The CMF says, in its opening pages: “We reject ideas of natural gifts and talents.” And the policies it sets forth reflect this position: it is an outright attack on high-standards math.

Not surprisingly, then, the CMF has produced a strong backlash in California, especially among mathematics professors, Asian-Americans, and even some progressive politicians like Rep. Ro Khanna, who represents much of Silicon Valley in Congress. Several Stanford professors have published their own response to the framework; petitions have garnered thousands of signatures from professors across the country.

One person who criticized Boaler quite strongly was Jelani Nelson, a CS/EE professor at Berkeley. His criticism was twofold: first, he criticized the CMF for having low standards; and second, he exposed Boaler’s $5,000/hour consulting fee charged to public school districts and questioned whether she was really doing right by minority students.

Today, April 5th, Prof. Nelson tweeted an email that he received from Boaler last Friday, April 1st, in which she suggests that she had contacted the police because of the posts.

Twitter has since removed several of the posts, which Boaler accused Nelson of using to share “private details” about her. To the contrary, these were public records taken directly from the website of the Oxnard School District. Those records expose that Boaler charged tens of thousands of dollars to public schools in California, which makes censoring them a top priority.

Read the full email from Boaler to Nelson below:


So, in case you’re thinking of criticizing Prof. Boaler, a few reminders based on her message to Prof. Nelson:

Publishing her consulting fee of $5,000/hour is “misinformation.” Do not republish this information (that her consulting fee is $5,000/hour)
It’s also harassment
She will send the police and lawyers after you
You must take down the post and act more “collegial”
Got it?

Nelson, for his part, fired back at Boaler on Twitter, saying: “It is horrifying that the CMF claiming to uplift black children was co-authored by a person who finds police intimidation against blacks acceptable. I encourage concerned alumni and members of the Stanford community to express your concern to the university administration.”

As a matter of principle, we don’t believe in administrative action against professors, even for sketchy actions like this; we only wish Boaler believed the same. After all, it is the same First Amendment and academic freedom that protect her rights to a public tantrum as Nelson's right (and ours) to criticize her. And for what it’s worth, we find no evidence that Boaler brought the police into the situation because of Nelson’s race, as he suggests. Her long history of responding poorly to criticism shows that she is an equal-opportunity critic basher.

Here’s the reality: Boaler has been exposed over the past year as a charlatan whose ideas are not only disastrous for children, but a political liability for left-wing politicians in California who need parents to keep voting for them. And now, she has been exposed as a rent seeker and a cheap scammer, and is lashing out at the person who posted the evidence.

Boaler’s sad attempt at censorship has already failed, but we want to make sure it really fails, so we’re republishing the evidence here, all public records from the OSD Board.

First is the original contract that Boaler signed with the Oxnard School District in November 2020, in which she agreed to provide eight hours of consultation across four sessions at a rate of $5,000 per session ($20,000 total)


But as it turned out, $5,000 per session wasn’t nearly enough for Boaler. She had meant to charge $5,000 per hour, i.e. $10,000 per session, for a total bill of $40,000. The OSD agreed to that amendment in August 2021.



Maybe the sickest part of the whole affair is that the OSD contract was paid with a block grant designated for “Low Performing Student[s]”. How could it possibly benefit low-performing students to fork over twenty grand – and then double it! – to Jo Boaler for a few Zoom calls? Unfortunately, this is just the status quo in California. As long as you present as woke, you can siphon money intended to help struggling students and the State will nod its head.

Here are some shocking numbers that demonstrate just what a scam this is:

If OSD had contracted Boaler for one additional two-hour session at $5,000 per hour, they could have hired a new teacher for a year – $50,722. Maybe that would have helped those students in need a bit more?
The average K-12 public school teacher in California earns $84,531 per 180-day school year. That means that Boaler is demanding over two weeks of average teacher pay per hour that she consults for public schools.
At this rate, California high schools will be compelled to cut calculus with or without the new framework – after Boaler is done collecting her consulting fees, there won’t be any money left to pay the teachers!

As a result of Boaler’s attempt to suppress the evidence of her grift via intimidation and legal threats against other academics, the Stanford Review believes that it is our job as an independent campus newspaper to step up. Accordingly, we will be investigating how many other public school districts Professor Boaler has fleeced in the same manner as Oxnard. Just how much taxpayer money has she amassed for herself in the name of helping California school children? We’re going to find out and report it fully; and like Prof. Nelson, we won’t be deterred by threats of police action.

Unfortunately Jo Boaler has some idiotic opinions when it comes to advancement in math. Rather than let students proceed at their own pace, she has become obsessed with forcing everyone to do the same thing and causing major problems in mathematics education in California. She has great ideas about the details of how to teach math, but it boggles the mind that she can't handle some 12 year olds learning calculus.

My child had a visual issue called convergence insufficiency. The ability to memorize verbally was huge and she was very good at it. So, the 2-minute memorization of times tables was easy and could do it the first time but the struggle with mathematics, especially geometry, was huge due to a struggle to visualize. Vision therapy helped but her eye communication to the "brain wiring" as you mentioned was impaired. As a result, she was learning entirely by hearing. This is an area that neuro-science, teachers, eye doctors, etc. need to better understand. Both my husband and I are extremely well-educated and spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out what the issue was (which we finally figured out when she was 10) and the school system was not helpful. Lots of math would have made her life miserable but a different way of teaching someone with her issues would have been huge.

Just give them coloring books they'll love math or maths or mathematic

Creative math is best.

This woman talks like a politically correct bureaucrat rather than a genuine educator who shares insights for better math-learning. "Don't give up," "Believen in yourself," "Embrace the hard work," "Make good friends." Image that she were introduced as a bio, cs, or even literature educator, it'd make zero difference in the message she sent. What a waster of an hour and a half of my time!

Lex takes soooo long to make the most basic points. Surprise Lex people are here to hear the guest speak.

I remember a 7th grade teacher who told me I wasn't cut out for mathematics. I ended up getting a B.S. and M.S. in Mathematics.

Say I don't want to learn math. What's wrong with that. Just leave me be.

Thank you for bringing her to your podcast. I just bought her book.

As documented in a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, as well as a website by Brian Conrad (Stanford professor of math -- actual math), Boaler has a pattern of misrepresenting data and published studies. She'll claim that "according to neuroscience, your brain grows when you make a mistake," and the actual neuroscientist she cites will say "our study didn't say that, and we didn't even try to study that question." And she doesn't back down or apologize for repeated misunderstandings and misrepresentations like this. Sad to see.

It’s amusing to me how this episode has such a low view count

As a math teacher of 22 years, I highly recommend Barbara Oakley's approach to help students find success and satisfaction in Math. Algebra matters. Quality direct instruction matters. Systematic practice matters.

good interview. Needed this. University classes start again soon and am taking Intro to Discrete Mathematics, Calculus 2, and Physics 2 in tandem. Am very overwhelmed and self-doubt is certainty there. Will do my best, have high-expectations and will not/can not settle for less than an A in all 3.

Can you go from being literally simple as in counting with your fingers but having interest in science and other things knowing it's a necessity at 41 years old to grasp the highest levels of maths

Conclude in general, we've to work hard swallow struggle and find good mentor

Every school teacher should come with a Marry Poppins accent 😅

There used to be "human calculators" before the advent of calculators and computers. Unfortunately our school system has not changed from those times. Mental math is a useful thing to learn but it shouldn't be mandatory though.

Awesome

I can relate to deep thinking dropouts

Despite my lack of talent with math, I enjoy it and because of encouragement by some teachers, I continued where others had stopped and I have ended up more proficient than many other nonprofessional math people.

SHE IS A WOMAN

This conversation is encouraging to me, as an adult who struggled immensely with math, but have keen spatial and pattern awareness, I finally recognized that I have Discalculia. number symbols mean absolutely nothing to my brain. If I had had a single teacher who could have said the following: math is a language, and it can be done entirely visually.... a whole different world would open up. I am still open to learning. I went to the youcubed website, but it seems really geared for k-12 students, and teachers. where do I go to find a tutor who can teach visual mathematics to an adult learner with very little background math education that made sense. I need to ask questions 1-1, not so much follow a program. The other thing I want to emphasize is that there is a huge difference between a visual or geometric math object,and a symbolic pictorial image describing a math concept. The symbolic visuals, which are not numerically precise, are actually more confusing than helpful. it is where the visuals/colors/shapes/sounds ARE the math, not a representation of the math, that is when it actually makes sense as a language, to me.

Ok I think math teaching is such a problem because the material is never written by a math expert. Granted for all the other early school subjects you don't need a phd to appreciate the material, but having a high school horizon for math is simply not sufficient. It serves as the foundation for all science related subjects, so special care should be given to it from the earliest. And you cannot have a passion or understanding for it if all you did is high school math as part of educator's credential for writing a math framework. There is no reason not to employ university professors in engineering or math for writing the material. It's not like a piano virtuoso can't or doesn't teach pupils with no knowledge of playing piano.

How can you write teaching material about something that you are not even using? Unless you are an engineer or mathematician, you are not using any of the math taught in school.

The recent news on her influence destroying math curricula in public schools while sending her children to private schools casts this in a different light now.

I’m sorry, but I would PAY to see her or lex teach my hs math classes for a week. Let them put this stuff to the grindstone and see how quickly much of this wishful thinking/ head in the clouds bs works. These 2 are striking out EVERY TIME while they like to speculate on how to best do my job lol. They would quit after a few days in my world GUSRANTEED

I didn't know that Lex discusses Math as well. Nice. :)

A key element not discussed directly in this video is how kids are taught to handle frustration. Learning anything new can be frustrating; how you manage that frustration largely determines if you stick with something or quit. We typically learn this by example from our parents. Do they curse and throw things or have a calmer and more measured approach? You can unlearn the more negative approach but having the tools to handle frustration early on almost guarantees a more positive outcome.

As someone forced to read her book and implement her ideas as part of getting my teachers license: don't waste your time by listening to this woman.

Utopian ideas detached from reality while at the same time opposed to the very things that would be needed for such a utopia.

I hated maths at school. It may be I had dyscalculia, or maybe it was the way it was taught. It seemed to be so boring and repetitive. Everything was done by rote. I remember one maths teacher shouting at me for not understanding.

Thank you

Hello Lex, If you want to elevate the status of your math level, take a college-entrance-exam. Afterwards, consult with your counselor to determine what level of college math you are eligible for. Then, enroll in a math course at night so that it doesn’t interrupt with your daytime stuff. … And lastly, know that you’ve got a two week grace period in which you can dump one teacher’s way of teaching, … for another, more comprehensive for you math teacher. Good luck!

Toughest field of study

Learning new math is like meeting a stranger for the first time. You shake hands with the new acquaintance and there's nothing to lead you to suspect what's beneath the surface, good or bad; so you accept everything at face value. Then later you meet the same person under entirely different circumstances and you start seeing a different side, maybe even a contradictory side. Still the picture is incomplete, till you meet the same person again and again under different degrees of separation. On then does the whole person begin to come through. After meeting the same person under the most diverse circumstances, you start getting some insight. YOu realize that insight, not rigorous proof, is what gives you that "oceanic" feeling or an all-seeing eye. You've arrived at the Langland's Program.

Love the comment that our brains are intuition machines. I think that is really true, especially from an evolutionary biological and epidemiological perspective. We are passing what we know down genetically, whether individually or socially we are aware of it or not. It does offer a strong case for leaning on visual tools to convey mathematical principles and using that to reinforce algorithmic approaches.

Emphatically yes, I agree that our systems are set up to eschew the slower, deeper, perhaps more creative thinkers. I guess the only saving grace is that this type of learner is apt to keep at in life and possibly emerge later as successful in their pursuits.

I've always grouped and sought patterns in things. I was considered an advanced math student but got put off in grade 5 by a particular teacher who was obsessed with using high pressure competitive games in class. It stressed me out and I shut down. I didn't mind competition in sports, but I craved freedom in academic pursuits, so this didn't work for me. I kept exploring and took more math classes than any other by the time I finished 12th grade. It wasn't until I got to Uni where I found a teacher who absolutely loved teaching calculus and my love for math shone (I got a perfect score on my final exam and it felt amazing). At the same Uni I found another teacher who was able to answer all my questions around particular algorithms, who created them and why, and also what were the real world applications inherent in them. It seems to have taken a lifetime to get the context I was craving since ~ grade 3 or 4. It thrills me to hear a transition toward big ideas and connections is afoot. This could be a game changer.

Lex, I am with you on textbooks!!! I loved, loved, loved my calc textbook. By the end of the year, it was tattered and torn from over use. And there is nothing like the sound of a mechanical pencil.

Amazing show, as a young kid I was always very artistic, but I had a numerical mind as well. I never further explored math because of how it was presented to me, in sort of in a dry repetitive fashion that would make me question why I was learning this? Now I find myself drawn to math more than ever to articulate thoughts or ideas or concepts in a creative way through the medium called math, so the distinction between visualization, creativity and mathematics for me was profound!

This woman has no math education.