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July 19, 2025 35 mins

In this episode of the Where Parents Talk podcast, host Lianne Castelino speaks to Ted Dintersmith, education disruptor, former venture capitalist, and author of Aftermath: The Math You Wish You Took. The discussion explores the gap between traditional math education and the real-world skills students actually need to succeed.

Dintersmith distills the status quo by emphasizing the importance of creativity, critical thinking, and practical application. The conversation also delves into broader parenting concerns—including emotional and mental health, social media usage, bullying, and the importance of consent—showing how these complex issues connect back to how kids learn and grow.

The discussion shares insights on how to help children build a healthier, more empowered relationship with math—and life.

Takeaways:

  • Understanding the disconnect between traditional math education and real-world applications is crucial for parents.
  • Parents should embrace a broader view of math, encouraging creativity and real-life relevance over rote memorization.
  • The conversation around math education needs to shift from grades to fostering critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
  • Incorporating math discussions into everyday life can help children develop a healthier relationship with the subject.
  • The rise of AI in education highlights the need for students to understand concepts rather than just procedures.
  • Parents can play a vital role in their child's learning by making math fun and engaging, rather than a chore.

This podcast is for parents, guardians, teachers and caregivers to learn proven strategies and trusted tips on raising kids, teens and young adults based on science, evidenced and lived experience.

You’ll learn the latest on topics like managing bullying, consent, fostering healthy relationships, and the interconnectedness of mental, emotional and physical health.

Links referenced in this episode:


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Episode Transcript

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(00:00):
Foreign.
Welcome to the Where ParentsTalk podcast. We help grow better
parents through science,evidence and the lived experience
of other parents. Learn how tobetter navigate the mental.
And physical health of yourtween teen.
Or young adult through provenexpert advice.

(00:22):
Here's your host, Lianne Castelino.
Welcome to Where Parents Talk.My name is Lianne Castelino. Our
guest today is a best sellingauthor and former venture capitalist.
Ted Dintersmith has worked intechnology, public policy, business
and education. He is also adocumentary producer whose core interest

(00:46):
lies at the intersection ofeducation, innovation and the future
of civil society. Ted's latestbook is called Aftermath the Math
you Wish you Took. He's also afather of two and he joins us today
from Jamestown, Rhode Island.Welcome and thank you for being here.
Yeah, great to be here.

(01:06):
I am excited about thisconversation because we're not just
talking about math, but mathreally has been a central focus of
your entire life. Can you takeus through when did it first manifest
for you, this interest in mathand why this subject matter? Why
has it been so important to you?
Yeah, well, I'm old enoughthat grade school is a little bit

(01:27):
hazy, so bear with me. But myearly grades, I do recall never being
on the honor roll because Ihad horrible penmanship grades back
when that mattered. When I wasin, I want to say fourth grade, ish,
I had a big test of an end ofthe year test that was basically
how fast can you add,subtract, multiply, divide? One of

(01:47):
the things that I now writeabout as being not a terribly important
skill, but one of the things Iwas good at was quick error free
calculations with numbers. Andso I did really well and suddenly
I was viewed not as the badpenmanship student, but the really
good math student. And I thinkit's fair to say, I mean expectations

(02:08):
become self fulfilling onceeveryone around you views you as
being really good atsomething. It tends to fall in line.
And so from then on, math wasa really signaling aspect of my performance
in school and something I didreally well on in terms of the the
exams that came my way.
So following up on that,you've had math intense math focused

(02:30):
roles over the years. You'vegot a PhD in engineering from Stanford.
You've taken that conceptthough much further. So what did
those experiences teach you,if anything, about the impact of
math on society as a whole?
Yeah, I'd say if somebodywanted to say, hey guy, you took
way too many theoretical mathcourses in school, they would be

(02:52):
on solid grounds. And sobecause I got a master's in physics.
Physics, which was really lotsof theoretical math and then a PhD
in a math modeling program.And so I did my share of that. And
I recall that the chairman ofmy applied math department at Stanford,
years later, I was meetingwith him and he said to me kind of,

(03:12):
well, you know, all of therote mechanics, all these symbols
and equations and everything,none of that really matters. It's
really the ideas behind thisthat matters. And I was very fortunate
because it was a graduateschool program, very unusual even
by graduate school standards,that was focused on all the topics
I write about in my book. Howdo you estimate things? How do you
predict things? What's analgorithm? What's it mean to optimize?

(03:35):
How do you use math and logicto make better decisions? What are
creative moneyball statistics?What's probability beyond flipping
a coin? And I look back and Isaid, I used all of that every day,
which was so interesting,right? But I use none of those almost
40 college and graduate schoolcourses in math. None of the high

(03:59):
school math. And you said,what a disconnect, right? I mean,
it's half the sat, it's halfthe nation's report card. It largely
determines students prospectsin life. It's kids that don't get
a high school degree. Thinkabout what happens to a kid without
a high school degree. And 80%cite algebra is the reason they didn't
get their high school degree.And so it's elevated to the highest

(04:22):
level of importance, but it'ssomething adults don't use. And I
well, isn't that interesting?Holy moly. And that just got. I've
been itching to write thisbook for quite some time. And then,
you know, after Covid, thenation's report card came out and
you had all these newspaperheadlines and media stories about

(04:42):
the catastrophic results andthe disaster and the, you know, people
would write apparently withsome degree of thought that our 9
and 13 year olds have lost 20years of progress. Which, yeah, I
sort of thought like it reallyis taking it back to minus 11 and
minus 7 years old. I mean, Idon't think so. So I said I'm going
to write this book. And Ihave. So there it is.

(05:07):
So, so what was your impetusfor that? Because obviously it's
a large question. You know,we're talking about math scores and
the way mat taught not justbeing an issue in North America,
but globally. This has been atopic for, you know, several years
now. So what was your thecatalyst for writing Aftermath? And
what is the question thatyou're trying to answer as a result

(05:28):
of this book?
Yeah, I think if you had tosummarize it, I would say the story
of education certainly inAmerica, and I think it ripples throughout
the world, is we teach kidswhat's easy to test, not what's important
to learn the rote mathesoterics that we quiz kids on. Can
you invert a trig equation orcan you do a closed form integral

(05:49):
by hand or can you factor apolynomial? Those are ideal 30 to
60 second questions that youcan pack a standardized distribution,
high stakes exam with. That'swhat we do. It's baked into lesson
plans, it's baked into thetest, but it's also baked into the
narrative that this isactually testing something that matters

(06:10):
and it doesn't. You know, andI feel like this will sound immodest,
but I felt like I was in agood position to make this point.
You know, I'm not carrying agrudge against math because I did
well in it. You know, I goback to the slag rule days. I had
published papers where I hadto do closed form integrals by hand.

(06:32):
So I know what used to beimportant. And I've been side by
side with technology that'smade all the rote aspects of math
irrelevant because thecomputer that, you know, you're looking
at and I'm looking at does allof this perfectly. And yet as I visit
schools, and I visited, I haveto say, in the last decade, 500 schools
and talked to thousands andthousands of kids and teachers. When

(06:55):
I ask about the core ideas ofmath blanks, people, people like,
well, we never got to that.And. And yet we dwell in the world
of arc secants and piecewiselinear functions in the absolute
value of negative 27. And Ijust say, do you ever use that? No,
I never use that. What aboutdistinguishing between causation

(07:19):
and correlation? What aboutrevising your probability estimate
based on new data? What aboutalgorithms that control your life?
Do you understand those? Whatnever came up and just say like,
whoa, this is not a littlegap. This is a gap the size of the
Grand Canyon. This is a gapfrom Rhode island to Toronto, Canada.

(07:40):
And I feel like, man, somebodyneeds to write a book to explain
and show this unbelievablyinteresting math that we can. Each
of my chapters starts withsomething that I either did or observed
with K through 8 kids. It'snot graduate school math estimation.
I talk about kids estimatingthe number of jelly beans in a jar.

(08:02):
It's interesting and it'srelevant in so many ways. In Life,
but it's not taught. And thereason this is, I think, the critical
point. Why isn't estimationtaught in schools? It's not taught
because there's not one rightanswer. If we were to, say, estimate
the number of trees within 10miles of where you live in Toronto,

(08:24):
that's an incrediblyinteresting challenge. But there's
not a right answer. Right? Youcould come up with 5, 10 different
interesting approaches to it.It's creative, it's logic based,
it requires rigorous thinking.But you can't put it into a 45 second
multiple choice question on astandardized exam. We skip over estimating,

(08:46):
we skip over all the stuffthat matters that any of us can grasp
because we want to focus onwhat can be boiled down to standardized
tests that we administer inthe United States. On a scale of
tens of millions. A.
So you allude to the gap,let's call it a chasm between where
we are and where we need tobe. What is it going to take at a

(09:10):
very base level? Because, youknow, in addition to your professional
perspective, you also visitedover all 50 states and over 200 schools
in 2015, 2016. So, you know,10 years ago and saw that firsthand,
among other things. So whatneeds to be done to get to where
we need to be or at least onthe course to where we need to be?

(09:33):
Yeah, it's a great question.And you know, I've been doing this
now, probably when you reallylooked at doing it in earnest, working
on fostering innovation inschools, probably 13, 14 years into
it with, you know, a lot of mytime and a fair amount of my, my
financial stuff. And I thinkif you went back and said to me how
hard it would be to changeschools, I, I would have, I said,

(09:57):
it can't be that hard. Right.You know, like, if you make your
points and people believethem, which happens, right. You know,
I give talks and I have filmsand I write books and I don't have
anybody, no, no one everchallenged me and says, you're all
wrong. They're not thatobvious. You know, they're not that
subtle of points. I mean, youknow, just, I just say give all the
credit to Maria Montessori.You know, like, go deep, explore,

(10:18):
create, invent. My, mynonprofit partner for several years
before he passed away was SirKen Robinson. You know, most watched
TED Talk of all time. Doschools kill creativity? Nobody throw,
nobody threw tomatoes at KenRobinson. People gave him standing
ovations. Of course schoolskill creativity. Of course, when
machines do, all the rotehumans need to be creative, they

(10:40):
aren't controversial points,but there's this baked in inertia
to the school system thatmakes it very hard to affect change.
And so I think one thing thatI have no say in but that's happening,
I think, is AI eliminatesmillions of jobs, which it will,
and particularly eliminatesthe jobs fresh college grads used
to roll into. I think that'sgoing to impart urgency and change

(11:04):
mindsets, particularlyparents. I wish it weren't under
such dire circumstancesbecause there's nothing worse than
pushing your kid for 16 yearsto do everything right and then having
them say, you know, nobodywants to even interview me. That's
not a great outcome for anyconcern, but that's going to happen.
But I also felt like if Icould write a book in an approachable

(11:24):
style that was interesting andfun, which I've tried to do, and
make the math ideas sopowerfully evocative and just say,
here's what estimation is, andstart with talking about estimating
things like jelly beans in ajar or know I something I did with
my kids for years, still do itevery year, is that during the holidays,

(11:46):
the local diner puts all theseChristmas tree ornament balls on
the ceiling. They putthousands of balls on the ceiling
and we'll go and try toestimate how many are there. And
I use that to say, hey, I didthis when my kids were like 6 and
8 years old. You know, thisisn't graduate school math. This
is really interesting. Andthen use that to show not the details,

(12:08):
equations, but to show thecore ideas and then bring those ideas
to light. In the context ofhow do you estimate Covid cases and
deaths? How do you do acensus? How do you estimate unemployment?
How do you estimate the numberof bald eagle species in the lower
four? You know, like all theseareas in life that beg for estimation

(12:29):
skills. Then you read each ofthese examples or case studies and
they're all short, they're alla page or so. I've worked really
hard. I hope people will saythat was really interesting. I didn't
realize that the numbers I seein my life all have a story behind
them. They were all producedby teams of people trying to make
an estimate. Each estimate hasits error bars, has its issues, has

(12:54):
its definitions that you'reassuming that may not be appropriate.
Wow. When you have that mathmindset, when you're equipped with
that, it completely changesthe way you view your world. And.
And I hope that. I hope I cando that to some extent. For those
willing to read a book aboutmath, which by the way, is my biggest
challenge. You know, you sayto somebody, hey, you want to read

(13:14):
a book about math? And mostpeople say, oh, you're kidding.
Like, I never want to go.
I never want to return to thattopic. I'm still bearing the scars
of it.
Well, you know what? I thinkyour book is very fascinatingly named,
by the way. Aftermath is justa really smart, smart title when
we talk about. You alludedthis group in what you just said.

(13:36):
Parents. What would you say isa common misconception among parents
about math and how it's beingtaught that you'd like to clear up?
Because that is a reallyimportant place to start is with
that group of parents.
Yeah, no, it's a greatquestion. And I love, by the way,
the work you're doing on thispodcast is terribly, terribly important.
You know, most parents I talkto, I mean, first parents always

(13:59):
have the best of intentions,you know, and they'll often tell
me, I just want my child to behappy. And, and then they'll go about
it all wrong. And so what I'dhope a parent will realize is first
of all that by showcasingmath, I'm highlighting fundamental
misallocations of time andeffort in education. And so I hope

(14:21):
people will say and say, waita minute, why would we hold schools
and teachers and kidsaccountable to math? They won't remember,
won't use as adults, thatmachines do handle perfectly. So
that's the first thing. But Ialso think they're sort of baked
into this view of the worldthat kids are either math people
or you're not a math person.You're either a math person or you're
not a math person. And what Ifound is when you invite people to

(14:45):
think about creative,interesting, open field math, a lot
of the people that think theyweren't math people are really good
at it. And a lot of people whohave been told you're a great math
person by their grades andscores sort of struggle, right? And,
and it's, it's as though we'rehaving everybody play one niche sport
in Olympics when there are 50other great sports you could play.

(15:08):
And somebody who's not good atweightlifting might be really good
at, you know, high, high, youknow, diving or something, you know,
who knows what. And, and socurling with a Canada specialty.
Yes. Yeah. You know, and so I,and then what I, what I really hope
with parents, right? And it'swhy I intentionally start each chapter

(15:29):
with something that K through8 kids can do is that it becomes
part of dinner time or cardrives and that's what I do with
my kids. You know, I, I do, Ido look at the world through the
lens of math. And I have foundover and over again on any walk or
car drive or dinnertimeconversation, there are a million
things that come up in life.You can turn it into an interesting

(15:50):
math related challenge. Andthat may sound like, wait a minute,
you're going to have kids eatlima beans during dessert? But it
doesn't have to be that waybecause you know, parents out there,
trust me, if you make itinteresting, kids dive in, you know,
and, and they will get reallyinterested. And when they start to
think about the world in thecontext of math related ideas, suddenly,

(16:14):
even though I would dispose ofmost of the math that's taught, particularly
8th grade through 12th grade,the math becomes at least tolerable
or more interesting. And youcan turn it around. I think it's,
I never see this in schools,but let me take a good example is
kids are drilling and drillingand drilling Khan Academy lectures
or videos on factoringpolynomials, as though any adult

(16:37):
in America ever has to factorx cubed minus 3x squared plus 2x
minus 5. It's just like, waita minute, no one does this, but you're
going to spend hours of yourlife trying to figure out how to
do it. And not in alllikelihood remembering it beyond
the test, but you can turnthat into an interesting lesson.
Why did people at some pointneed to know that? How did this ever

(17:00):
come up as a thing? What roledid it play before we had computers?
That becomes reallyinteresting. Even the vast wasteland
of high school math. And Ifeel bad describing it that way,
but I believe that's true. Youcan turn that into something interesting
if you start to look beyond itand figure out why it was used and
why it was, who invented it,why did they invent it, what was

(17:23):
it good for and why it's nolonger important today.
So picking up on that, I mean,we are here because circumstances
led us to be teaching math theway it is currently being taught
and has not changed in many,many, many decades. So with, you

(17:43):
know, the Internet, which hasnow been around for a while, and
technology and everythingelse, not, not the least of which
is the emergence of AI. Like,where should this be in schools?
And by this, I mean the waymath is taught versus where we are.
And the fact of the matter is,is it should have been changed quite

(18:08):
some time ago if you onlyfactor in the Internet. Right. So
how do we get to where we needto be going?
Yeah, I would love to beenthusiastic about the fact that
schools will change quickly.You know, I'm skeptical, I think
I should be skeptical, but I.Family time can change quickly, right?
And so to parents out there, Iwould say this. I'd say you could

(18:31):
either push your kid todevelop a strong academic track record
to get into college wherethey'll spend four years and perhaps
leave and not get a job.That's option one, or you can help
your kid understand ideas thatare interesting and understand how
to leverage AI, how toleverage machine intelligence to
bring that to life and to haveit have impact. I'll just give you

(18:53):
an example. I mean, a kidthat's gotten perfect grades in high
school, goes to college,graduates magna cum laude, but is
only trained to carry outassignments, that kid will not be
employable. It's harsh, but Imean the fact is AI is unbelievably
powerful at carrying outassignments. And so if you spent

(19:14):
16 years trained to carry outan assignment that AI does in 12
seconds for free or 20 bucks amonth or something, why would somebody
hire you? Right? And that'salready playing out. We're already
seeing that. But if you, if,and I have a number of times in the
book where I talk about here'sthe idea and here's how it enters
the real world and here's howyou can use AI to do all those mechanics.

(19:38):
And if suddenly you arecertainly 22, 18, 16, 12, and you're
good at that, you can go tolocal businesses and help them. Okay,
let's take a look at what arethe last 36 months of sales data.
I know now there are differentways to go about predicting the future

(20:01):
based on that. I can do alittle bit of a systems model because
I know how to identify factorsthat might influence this. I can
ask AI to crank out a systemsdynamic model for this and then play
around and vary thoseparameters and develop a great analysis
of likely future demand forour product. Well, you know, you
don't need high school math.Like read my book. And you can do

(20:26):
that, right? And practice andget good at it. Do it on your own
with some things that you careabout. Look at how many points the
player on your localbasketball team scored in the last
12 games and then try topredict, well, maybe they'll score
in the next three. That's areally interesting prediction problem.
I mean, very interesting. AndI think that's the role parents can

(20:47):
play is to start to thinkabout the world. What's a hook here
that plays to my kidsinterests? You know, one kid might
Love basketball, but anotherkid might hate it. You know, that
basketball example will not begood for a kid who's totally into,
you know, some, someparticular form of music or following
an Internet influencer. And solet's look at the number of followers

(21:09):
this influencer had over thelast three years. And you know, these
are all really interestingchallenges if you understand the
ideas at play and get somepractice prompting ChatGPT or I use
Claude and chat, I use a lotof them because I use them to fact
check each other. They'reactually really good now at mathematical

(21:31):
reasoning and getting betterby the day. But it's up to the human
to know what the ideas are andknow how they relate to what's going
on in the world and to getgood at leveraging AI. And if schools
won't do that or help kid getgood at that, which they in all likelihood,
and it breaks my heart to sayit, but they probably won't, a family

(21:51):
can. And a kid that's reallygood at that, they can write their
own ticket. Right. So youdon't have to worry about whether
they got into Waterloo or notor you know, some Ivy League college
or not. Like everybody's goingto want to hire them. You know, like
it's not such a bad thing.
So when you talk about beinggood at math, you know, the way you

(22:11):
talk about it versus what weunderstand today, what is it that
parents, that you thinkparents need to understand about?
What does it mean? What shouldbeing good at math actually look
like for a young person today?
Yeah, I would say we'll talkabout parents, but we could actually
take one hop over for statelegislators or you know, ministers

(22:33):
of education or premiers or,or presidents or secretaries of education.
You know, I think we need tounderstand that what we hold kids
accountable is what teacherswill teach and what the test will
do. And so if we say thestandard of academic achievement
is how many low level mathproblems you can get right in 45

(22:53):
minutes without wasting time.Right. You know, like what's, what's
the advice that an SAT tutorgives a kid? That's the most, most
high leverage advice they cangive. If you come across a problem
that's hard, you're going tohave to spend several minutes figuring
out skip it. I mean likethat's heartbreaking advice, but
that's the advice I give. Andso to, to look at math more in a

(23:16):
more nuanced way and torealize that the, this whole body
of arc secants and cotangentsand who the heck knows what else
you Know the sum of angles ina hexa, hexagon or something is just
there as this at bestdistraction and that if we can actually
talk through and start tounderstand the ideas, it will be

(23:37):
really fun and interestingconversation. It will be something
Even at age 10 my kid can diveinto. And that's what's going to
serve them well. That's what'sgoing to give them a career advantage.
That's what's going to helpthem be an informed, responsible
citizen. So it's going tomatter. And it's like it's this great
alignment between what'sinteresting and what matters. And

(23:58):
it's just in that Venndiagram, interesting. And what matters
overlap. But there's almost nooverlap with that and the math of
school.
So if you were given theopportunity to design a one hour
math class, pick your agegroup, what would that look like?
What would it entail?
I probably put in front ofkids a handful of recent stories

(24:19):
in the news and inviteddiscussion of. And it would depend.
You tell me the age group, Iprobably skew it, right? But in the
United States we're a bit. Theinterest is tapering down over the
years but it's a baseballloving country and you've got the
Blue Jays there in Toronto.Well, what are interesting statistics

(24:41):
to tell you how valuable aplayer is and how would those statistics
evolve? Let's talk thatthrough. And you realize that where
our thinking used to be istotally different from where it is
today. And there's this thingcalled wins above replacement. And
how is that defined? And whatare three other ways you could define

(25:02):
it that might make more senseto you? It's like these, every number
has a story. And so findingI'd probably have four 15 minute
sessions. Try to pick a rangeof things that appeal to people.
So might be one in sports, onein arts, one in civics and one in
science business. I mean Iplay around with those topics and

(25:23):
then pick an example and saylet's dive in. What do you think
is going on with this? Andit's like all those things are unbelievably
fascinating discussions andyou realize, my gosh, it doesn't
have to be multiple choicequestions and worksheets and sweating
it out for whether I can getthree more questions right than the

(25:45):
person next to me in theproctored test area so that I'm now
in the top 8% instead of thetop 13%. We put the highest of stakes
on the most irrelevant of priorities.
How do you then see unseenmathematical forces like credit scores

(26:06):
and you know, social mediaalgorithms and data collection, et
cetera, et cetera, shaping ourdecisions without us even realizing
it.
Yeah. You know, not that theseare deep, dark secrets. I have discussions
in my book about, you know,the Facebook engagement algorithm,
you know, and they justrealize that the way to keep, in

(26:29):
an ad driven model, which itis then revenue depends on length
of user engagement per sessionand what sparks longer sessions with
more engaged community membersare things that are outrageous. And
so I talk through thealgorithm, which is not a math based,
it's not like 12 pages ofequations, it's just what it means.

(26:53):
How do you go aboutidentifying content that is relevant
to a person that pushes themone step beyond where they are today
and then talk about whatFrancis Hagen said, the whistleblower,
and how they knew. I'm a techperson by background. I backed a
lot of these companies. Excuseme, I didn't back Facebook, but I
backed a bunch of earlypioneers in the Internet infrastructure

(27:15):
area. But some of them arejust irresponsible at best. And I
think you could probably gofurther than that and say they know
what they're doing, they knowhow toxic it is, but at the end of
the day, the choices betweenrevenue versus toxicity, they're
choosing revenue. And, and Ithink people need to understand that.
But, but all of these things,you know, like what we watch on Netflix,

(27:38):
algorithms, our credit scores,algorithms. And for every algorithm
there's a counter approach,right? So if you know the algorithm
for your credit score, youknow how to counter that. You know
that never shut down anexisting account. You know that every
n months, open up a new creditcard and pay off the bill promptly.

(27:58):
You know, if you're buying acar, borrow some modest amount of
money and then pay it offpromptly. All of these things play
into an algorithm thatdetermines whether you're credit
worthy. You know, it's a bitof a game you're playing, but if
the, if the world around youis playing that game, I don't think
it serves you well to beoblivious to that game. And so the

(28:19):
best defense is a goodoffense. What is an algorithm? How
does it shape your life? And Ioffer examples where you might create
your own algorithm to improveyour own quality of life. If I can
say one more thing aboutalgorithms, right? Algorithms are
incredibly creative. We don'tteach it because they're not one

(28:41):
right algorithm. There areseveral interesting creative ways
with different trade offs forspeed versus accuracy versus, you
know, the different dimensionsyou're trying to optimize. And when
you get into that, you justsay oh, that's so cool. Oh, no. Now
Facebook's trying to optimizead revenue. Okay? So that dictates
a certain algorithm for whatyour content feed looks like. Got

(29:04):
it. This is the basic ideabehind how they decide what content
priorities belong in yourinbox, you know, or your newsfeed.
And, you know, I think that atleast I'm hopeful, but, you know,
the. My early readers, I hopethey're right in that it is interesting
and it is fun and it isrelevant, and I've done at least

(29:25):
a decent job of bringing it tolife in understandable ways.
So, as a parent, and forparents who listen to or watch this
interview, taking ineverything you've talked about, because
we've talked about a lot, howmath is taught versus what we really
need to know about math, youknow, innovation in education, you
know, life skills, etc. Etc.How can parents, at a very basic

(29:47):
level, help their kids developa more healthy relationship with
math and, you know, a relevantrelationship with math when they're
faced with how it's beingtaught? And at the same time, as
you just outlined all theexamples every single day of how
math is in use, what is abaseline starting point for that

(30:08):
parent?
Yeah, this is a grossoversimplifications, but. But I think
parent. And I talk to a lot ofparents, but I think they fall into
three categories. One is theoverwhelming majority, which is parents
who didn't do well in highschool math, who don't think they're
math people that sort of throwup their hands. You know, maybe they
don't throw up their hands ingrade one through four or five, but

(30:30):
once we start getting to, youknow, certainly algebra, they just
say, like, you know, I'm. I'mcounting on the teacher, you know,
like. Or I'll find a tutor ifyou've got the resources. Right.
I think those parents actuallyhave far more math potential than
they realize. So I hope theyread the book and say, oh, my gosh,
I can have great discussionswith my kid about math. That may
not be the math they'restudying in school, but could be

(30:53):
an important path to helpingthem love math themselves and begin
to develop a field for itsrelevance. So that that class, they're
the ones that did do reallywell in school. And I was probably
guilty of this early with mykids of saying, I got this right.
Oh, yeah, yeah, I know. I knowhow to. I know how to invert, you
know, like, fractions, and Iknow how to solve, you know, ratios

(31:14):
of polynomials and things likethat. So let me Just show you. Let
me just show you. Or, youknow, and I think those parents need
to, to back off a bit, right,and to say, yeah, okay, you're playing
this game in school, I canhelp you play this game in school,
but it's irresponsible, right,not to show the kid the broader picture.
And so the parents thatbelieve that they are great math

(31:35):
people and some of them are, Ithink, have the opportunity to broaden
the playing field. And thenthere are the parents. That just
was like kind of a given, youknow, it's just like, I don't know,
you know, like I don't, youknow, I'm just at a loss, right?
And what I would love to sayto those parents is, right, I don't
care what your. Who your kidis. Every kid's got their talents

(31:57):
and strengths. You know, it'sjust that, as Sir Ken explained so
powerfully, you know, andtragically, school largely crushes
that out of kids. You know,it's a 130-year-old model that was
expressly designed to preparepeople for 45 years of career doing
work. That was a school model,the model we use today and in the

(32:19):
United States. And I suspectit's true around the world as well,
in most places, maybe notFinland, but. But we've decided to
double down on rote. We knowthat things aren't quite working.
So let's just put higherstakes on these exams. Let's just
panic when kids miss one extramultiple choice math question after
being out of school for twoyears because of COVID I mean, no,

(32:42):
no, no, no, no. And so for allparents, I hope they just sort of
step back and say, whoa,there's a side of life that's really
important and engaging andrelevant and the fact that it has
no overlap with school, so beit. I have discretion over what we
do in our free time. And let'shave some fun with this. And I know

(33:04):
that, I know I say that, and Iknow many people hearing will say,
well, he says you can have funwith it, but I could never. I mean,
I couldn't do that with mykid. And I just say, spend it. I
think you read this book infour or five hours, put in four or
five hours, and you could havefour or five years of great math
discussions with your kid.Seems like a good trade off.
It does. We're almost out oftime, but I did want to ask you one

(33:27):
insight that you want readersof Aftermath to leave with.
Yeah. If you've got a kid,particularly for parents, if you've
got a kid struggling withmath. The problem is almost certainly
not the kid. It's probably themath and the way it's tested and
so religious relax about thatand, and look for things they're
good at because the world'sgoing to reward them for greatness.

(33:50):
And increasingly, whether theygot an A plus or a D minus on, you
know, pre calculus, nobody'sgoing to care. Right. That's the
good, bad and indifferentnews. But the powerful news about
what's going on in the worldis employers will be far more likely
to hire a kid who understandsimportant ideas and knows how to
leverage machine intelligenceto hire a kid who was magna cum laude

(34:14):
through college. And that'salready today happening. So you think
about for kindergarten kidsthat that will be their world. So
I think it gives parents achance to just sort of take a chill
pill, you know, because mostkids at some point come home and
say, I hate math and I don'tknow why I'm having to study it.
And I think if you're going tobe honest with your kid, you should

(34:35):
say there's really no reasonyou should study it. But you don't
have to hate math. Math isactually fascinating. There's this
entire body of modern era mathideas and let's start going through
them and see what we can getout of it because it could be really
fantastic interaction betweena parent and child.

(34:55):
So much enlighteninginformation and food for thought.
Ted Dintersmith, author ofAftermath. Really appreciate your
time and your insight today.
Thank you. Yeah, this wasgreat conversation. Thanks.
Thank you. To learn more abouttoday's podcast, guest and topic,
as well as other parentingthemes, visit whereparentstalk.com.
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