Column: Take actual math classes

My philosophy professor asked people to name a few “fundamental laws of nature.” He was looking for examples of mathematical truths to lead into another discussion about philosophical truths.

“F=ma,” someone suggested. You know, force is mass times acceleration. Sir Isaac Newton’s second law of motion.

“Uh ... yeah,” my professor chuckled. Someone else suggested E=mc2.

“I don’t understand any of this stuff,” he said with a smile.

It was a small moment. The class proceeded to talk about the hidden meaning of the phrase “self-evident” from the Declaration of Independence for half an hour.

There was a recent New York Times article about Megan Smith, the Chief Technology Officer of the United States; apparently, she would cringe at such small moments (like when a long-time academic chuckles at how bad he is at science).

“We would never say that about reading,” Smith said.

My thinking was always built more for math and science, but when people struggle with math, I sympathize. I minored in Russian.

For the first three years of my college career, my most time-consuming classes were the Russian courses. I spent more time on daily language worksheets with cutesy little cartoons than I did on any computer science course. While my classmates were like sponges absorbing a constant stream of vocabulary, I was some stupid Styrofoam cup that someone had pulverized with a BB gun.

The point is that I’m not that good at languages. Even so, three years of struggling with Russian has added an extra dimension to my undergraduate career, exposing me to people and places that the computer science department could not have. I’m never going to get around the fact that the only lengthy texts I could stand to read in one or two sittings were Harry Potter books, but computer science and math alone don’t really make a diverse education, and the same could be said of philosophy and political science.

Do you know why UNC has the quantitative reasoning general education requirement? Because we have global warming deniers sitting on the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology in the House of Representatives.

Even in fields where it’s not directly applicable, an understanding of science and technology is necessary in some form, and people who decide to tack on an extra elective instead of struggling in a lower-level math course really aren’t doing themselves a big favor in the long run.

There’s something about the American education system that causes people to shy away from things they’re not naturally good at. Everyone wants to be “the smart one,” not “the guy who’s busting his ass to get a B.” No matter how many articles come up on Facebook feeds telling parents to compliment their children on how hard they work instead of how smart they are, this attitude continues at UNC.

So, to fulfill your QR credit, challenge yourself with actual calculus instead of “Intuitive Calculus.”