Why is it that you, without embarrassment, publish the fact that 70% of the staff of your Washington office can’t perform simple arithmetic? One can go into virtually any office and find someone who will freely admit that ‘I can’t do math.’“I can’t do math.” It’s probably one of the most common statements I hear as a teacher, and it would be difficult for me to come up with a statement that irritates me more (although saying “my bad” when you mean “my mistake” comes close). It is especially irritating because the person who says it invariably sounds happy and content with this assertion of inability. And it isn’t merely students; last year, I sat in a meeting while four Tennessee Wesleyan College personnel smiled cheerfully and told me one after the other that they couldn’t “do” math.--- John C. Nelson, in a letter to the Wall Street Journal
Stating that you can’t “do” math, it seems to me, is roughly equivalent to stating that you can’t read and can’t write. And while illiteracy is a serious concern (according to a 1993 report from the U.S. Department of Education, about 23% of all citizens of the United States are functionally illiterate), you are not likely to find many college students (or college personnel, for that matter) bragging with a grin that they can’t read a sentence or write their own name. And if someone told you that they couldn’t “do” history, you probably wouldn’t pat them on the head and say, “There, there, I can’t do history, either.” But this is exactly what happens in mathematics.
If it were truly the case that most people couldn’t “do” math, we as a nation (and as a world) would be in serious trouble. But, of course, almost all the people who are saying that they can’t “do” math are lying. If you can add two and three together to get five, you’ve just done some math. I have never yet encountered a person with a college education who couldn’t “do” math or was incapable of learning more math.
So what do people actually mean when they say that they can’t “do” math? Usually they are really stating one of two things. First, that they don’t like mathematics. Secondly, that mathematics is more difficult for them than other subjects, and that it takes a great deal more effort on their part to learn it. But many people feel the same way about, for example, physical exercise: they don’t enjoy doing it and find it to be very hard work when they try. But it would be strange indeed to say that you can’t “do” exercise. You may not want to do it. You may be unwilling to invest the time and effort into doing it. But you aren’t incapable of doing it. And the same is true, in my experience, in mathematics.
So tell me that you hate mathematics, and I’ll smile and say, “That’s okay. We all have different likes and dislikes.” Tell me that you find mathematics difficult to learn and hard to do, and I’ll sympathize and do my best to help you learn it despite the problems you may have. But don’t tell me you can’t “do” mathematics, because it simply isn’t true.