I've never used the information gleaned in "The Merchant of Venice," in my life. Nor have I used information I learned about the War of 1812 or Latin declensions. I've never needed how to write a lab report. My life is certainly full even though I don't remember Hamlet's soliloquy. (Or how to spell soliloquy -- I had to look it up.)
But no one -- no one! -- asks us to eliminate Shakespeare from the curriculum. Why is math under fire here? Or perhaps we should eliminate Shakespeare and other studies that folks never use. What would the result be?
We'd lose our culture. We would lose ourselves. We'd loose the essence of being human. Isn't the study of mathematics part of that cultural literacy too? Perhaps a bigger and unanswerable question is why -- in the US at least -- do people not see mathematics as part of our valuable culture?
Oh, the irony! I named this blog using a Shakespeare reference.
Further, I never would have known I'd made the right career choice in mathematics if I didn't have a study of history or English to which I could compare my studies of math. I'm glad that all options were presented to me; I'm glad I can be at least somewhat literate regarding the subjects I did not choose.
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