The room was silent again.
“The difference is ’rithmetic! A retired person living by the ocean, just doing a little reading and writing till the end of their days—that’s the dream, right? ‘What do you do all day?’ ‘Some reading, a little writing.’ Sounds idyllic, right? And yet school sucks. Everybody hates it. What’s the difference? ’Rithmetic! It’s time somebody put their finger on this fucking obvious thing. And I’m the principal, so I’m that person, and I’m going to abolish it. Now,” he said, looking for a glass of water to sip from and finding none, “now, are you going to be unprepared for some aspects of life? Probably. Yes. But you know what? You will have phones with calculators on them. You will have friends who can do math. My mom, God bless her—I love my mom, and she still doesn’t know whether a third of a cup of flour is bigger than a fourth of a cup. You know what she does? Is anybody here honestly wondering, Oh my God, how the hell does anything get baked?! Of course not, and you’re right not to worry. She asks my dad—he knows. Or these days, you ask Google or whatever you use nowadays; you find out in two seconds. And also, it’s the kind of thing you just pick up. Let’s say you’re working at a restaurant, and they offer you a ten percent raise. You’ll figure out what that means. You will! It’s just too interesting, it’s too relevant, it’s about you and money. You’re not going to let yourself get screwed.
“Now, do I wish you all knew math? Were great at math? Were fucking mathematicians? Of course! It’d be better. But not much better, listen to me. Not so much better that it’s worth turning eight years of potential heaven—wait, nine? K-one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight, yeah, nine”—he wasn’t, as was becoming clear, much of a math guy—“nine years of heaven of just reading great books and jotting down your thoughts about them—it’s just not worth turning nine years of heaven into nine years of hell. You’ll get to high school, and you’ll be behind in math, fine. But probably not that far—the other schools in this town are shit, let’s be honest.”
Here there was a sound wave of school spirit: “Whooo!”
“So you all get to high school, and, yes, you’re behind in math. But you’re so happy. Listen to me. This is so big-picture important. You’re so good at reading and writing. Okay? You write the most amazing college essay, you ace all your English and history and social studies classes—it’ll all even out. At least even out. Plus,” he said, “plus, you had the best eight years of your life! Childhood! Years you’ll always remember—hell, maybe you’ll even write a book about them—a beautiful one! So I’m just going to do this. I’m the principal. We are, now, a zero-mathematics school. See, you get what that means: zero, none. How did you know what ‘zero’ meant, just now? From your incredible math educations at Clark Street? No. Life. Context clues. See? So: who is ready to make school something that is only about reading and writing—reading fiction and the great true stories of history, and then writing about what’s cool and interesting about them? And also music and art and gym and all that stuff, and math teachers, don’t worry, you’ll keep your jobs, we’ll just put you on other stuff. But mostly, reading and writing. How about it? How about we go for this plan and have the happiest, and most literate, kids in the state—come what may!”
The students and many teachers cheered.
“Now I need to know you’re all in on this,” said the principal, lowering his tone. “Because you are giving up your math educations. That could be a serious thing. I don’t want you guys running up to me, crying, ‘Mr. McLaughlin, Principal McLaughlin, we didn’t learn maaaaath, now we can’t get into colllllllege.’ You just won’t know math. Are you really fine with that? Is anyone not okay with that?”
One small hand went up. A few bigger hands clapped for the small hand.
“Arush? You want to learn math?”
The boy’s head nodded.
“What if we set you up with a private tutor? Would that be okay?”
The boy nodded again and the hand went back down.