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Speaker 1: Math performance of USED teenagers you might be surprised. You're
Speaker 1: not gonna be surprised. The math performance of US teenagers
Speaker 1: math is bad. Has sharply declined since twenty eighteen, scores
Speaker 1: lower than twenty years ago, American students continuing to trail
Speaker 1: global competitors. There were some results that were A key
Speaker 1: international exam was released I think late last year, and
Speaker 1: in the first comparable global results since the coronavirus pandemic,
Speaker 1: fifteen year olds in the US scored below students in
Speaker 1: similar industrialized democracies like the UK, Australian, Germany, and well
Speaker 1: behind students in the highest performing countries such as Singapore,
Speaker 1: South Korean. Estonia continuing in underperformance in math that pre
Speaker 1: dated the pandemic. In other words, US.
Speaker 3: Students Estonia, those guys are killing it in math.
Speaker 1: Having fun with this?
Speaker 3: Have you ever been to Estonia. I have not It's
Speaker 3: a very small.
Speaker 1: Country, I know, but they're doing well in math.
Speaker 3: It's like saying Bergen, New Jersey is doing well in math.
Speaker 3: Guess what Scarsdale does really great in math?
Speaker 1: All right, so let's get to it. Our next guest says,
Speaker 1: there is a simple path to loving math. I actually
Speaker 1: love math. Joining us is Shaloni Sharma. She's a CEO
Speaker 1: and co founder of the nonprofit educational software organization Zern.
Speaker 1: Her new book Mathmind, The Simple Path to Loving Math,
Speaker 1: Cracking the Numeracy Code for everyone who has ever thought
Speaker 1: they were bad at math? Have you ever thought you
Speaker 1: were bad at math?
Speaker 3: I have a special I have an issue that I
Speaker 3: want to talk to Shanny about. So I'm glad you
Speaker 3: booked her. But why don't you go ahead?
Speaker 1: You start Slanny, Welcome, Welcome. I can't tell you how
Speaker 1: much we've been talking in the newsroom about who's good
Speaker 1: at math, who isn't bad at math? We have lots
Speaker 1: of questions. You start your book well, transparency. You're right.
Speaker 1: The first thing you should know about you is that
Speaker 1: you're not a math prodigy. And then you transferred in
Speaker 1: sixth grade, you got placed in Honors Math. Noticed something
Speaker 1: upon walking into the classroom. Tell us about yourself, walk
Speaker 1: us through that moment in time, and just share with
Speaker 1: us a little bit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, thank you so much. I'm so excited to
Speaker 4: talk about all kids loving math. So yeah, I was
Speaker 4: not a math prodigy, and I had a accidental and
Speaker 4: lucky experience in sixth grade that changed the trajectory of
Speaker 4: my life. My math teacher, mister Snyder, he just decided
Speaker 4: to believe in me when I didn't believe in myself.
Speaker 4: What had happened is I was in a math class
Speaker 4: in sixth grade. It was Honors Math. It's the first
Speaker 4: time I experienced that the boys were thriving and the
Speaker 4: girls were quiet in the back. There weren't actually very
Speaker 4: many girls in the class. There were more boys, and
Speaker 4: I was just barely holding on. I remember there was
Speaker 4: a point where I took a test. Mister Snyder called
Speaker 4: me to his desk. My stomach dropped. I went over
Speaker 4: to his desk and I saw less red marking than usual,
Speaker 4: and he said to me, he said, you did better
Speaker 4: on this test, and if you try your best, you
Speaker 4: could be just as good as the boys. And I
Speaker 4: know in twenty twenty four that we don't think that's
Speaker 4: a good thing to say to a little girl. But
Speaker 4: I will tell you that my heart exploded because it
Speaker 4: was the first time I considered that I didn't just
Speaker 4: have to survive, but that I could excel and I
Speaker 4: could be the best. And it started this powerful chain reaction.
Speaker 4: And I wasn't born one, but I made myself a
Speaker 4: math kid and I came to love math.
Speaker 5: And it's because of that moment.
Speaker 3: I had also some really great teachers that I'll never forget.
Speaker 3: I never thought I was that good at math. I
Speaker 3: was very dyslexic. I had a bad memory for you know,
Speaker 3: times tables in you know, first and second grade or
Speaker 3: whenever you do that. But I get to eighth grade
Speaker 3: and I get this algebra teacher at the Columbus Academy,
Speaker 3: Tim Hildreth, who just really made math seem more fun,
Speaker 3: like an art or like music, or like it was
Speaker 3: creative as you write in your book. And he connected
Speaker 3: with me in a way that was cool. The problem
Speaker 3: I have is that I can always visualize the solution.
Speaker 3: I can feel how the problem should work out, and
Speaker 3: I can get a lot of the answers right. I'm
Speaker 3: not good at the formulaic showing your work, and I
Speaker 3: never have been, so I wonder if that's a common problem.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean so much in there. So think about reading.
Speaker 4: You know, if, for example, let's say we were all
Speaker 4: going to take a reading test, but none of us
Speaker 4: knew how to read. We didn't know that each letter
Speaker 4: represented a sound, and that you could put the sounds
Speaker 4: together and make bigger sounds like we didn't. We didn't
Speaker 4: know that, but you showed us. You showed me a
Speaker 4: bunch of symbols, and you said, when these symbols are together,
Speaker 4: that means the word house. When these symbols are together,
Speaker 4: that means the word radio. And so there was a
Speaker 4: two hundred word test. I crammed it, I memorized all
Speaker 4: the words. I even got an A on the test.
Speaker 4: But because of how every human brain works, every adult brain,
Speaker 4: every kid brain, I would start to forget that. And
Speaker 4: so two weeks later, even though I got an A
Speaker 4: on the test, I would forget how to read. And
Speaker 4: so think about how terrifying an insane reading.
Speaker 5: Would feel if we taught it that way.
Speaker 4: And so what you're talking about happened to you in
Speaker 4: your eighth grade class is that the symbols and the
Speaker 4: meaning came together. So what math really is is symbolic
Speaker 4: notation to describe the real world around you. That's actually
Speaker 4: all it is. And so when you see pictures and visuals,
Speaker 4: then you get to connect that symbolic notation with reality
Speaker 4: and then it sinks into the brain and it becomes durable.
Speaker 4: And that's just the science of how our brains work.
Speaker 4: So if you're teaching, let's say a seventh grader about
Speaker 4: negative numbers, you can teach them all these rules of
Speaker 4: when you to apply on negative times a negative, it's positive,
Speaker 4: when you subtract and negative from a negative.
Speaker 5: You know, you can give them.
Speaker 4: A table and they may cram it, but they're going
Speaker 4: to feel really stressed. But if you instead you say, okay,
Speaker 4: think about negative numbers. As you dive into the ocean
Speaker 4: and you go deep into the ocean, and that's negative numbers.
Speaker 4: Get back up to sea level, that's zero, and then
Speaker 4: you climb a mountain, those are positive numbers. Now let's
Speaker 4: lay that out in the number line. And so if
Speaker 4: we see the number negative five, that is the position
Speaker 4: of the number on the number line. Now start playing
Speaker 4: with the numbers, and that's what's often missing for kids?
Speaker 5: Is that making sense?
Speaker 4: And the kids who love math, perhaps, maybe Carol, they're
Speaker 4: doing that in their heads. Either adults showed.
Speaker 5: It to them, they figured it out themselves.
Speaker 4: They read the textbook. However, they figured that out, but
Speaker 4: they put the symbols and the pictures together. And one
Speaker 4: of the main things we can do to help kids
Speaker 4: love math is always offer them those pictures proactively.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It's funny one of our producers cci, She's like, I
Speaker 1: want to read this book, and she even said in
Speaker 1: the newsroom, I think I had a question here, but like,
Speaker 1: can you help adults enjoy math and have kind of
Speaker 1: a math mind? Having said that, you know, I grew
Speaker 1: up there's a lot of memorization and a lot of
Speaker 1: like doing problems and a lot of that, And I
Speaker 1: feel like the focus wasn't so much on how you
Speaker 1: got there, just get there and get the right answer.
Speaker 1: I mean, can an adult learn to love math and
Speaker 1: be better at math?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Definitely.
Speaker 4: And I think I think we as adults all kind
Speaker 4: of have to, you know, for two reasons. One is,
Speaker 4: if we're parents or aunties and uncles of kids, if
Speaker 4: we love math, we will help them love math and
Speaker 4: so so it's just it's kind of our duty to
Speaker 4: help kids. But the second is in the world that is,
Speaker 4: you know, kind of manifesting in front of us, the
Speaker 4: need for numeracy. Just it's just off the charts, and
Speaker 4: you know, there's a lot of attention paid to literacy,
Speaker 4: but it just really pains me that there's this prevailing
Speaker 4: misconception that some kids are destined to be left behind
Speaker 4: and they can't do math, or some adults can't do math.
Speaker 4: And more and more we see that that means they
Speaker 4: can't participate, and that means even participate in like understanding
Speaker 4: your show. You know, you have such an interesting show,
Speaker 4: but you're using a lot of mathematical terms, and so
Speaker 4: we want people to be able to participate. But yes,
Speaker 4: I think there are four steps to building a math mind,
Speaker 4: and I think they pertain to anybody.
Speaker 1: It's like the race when you're at the you know,
Speaker 1: at the end of a dinner and you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to give them. You know, you're out to
Speaker 1: dinner with a bunch of friends, like fifteen twenty percent okay,
Speaker 1: Like everybody's like figuring it out, and it's like who
Speaker 1: could do it? So, like fast. I don't know.
Speaker 3: When we were kids, it was fifteen to twenty percent.
Speaker 3: Now they want like twenty twenty five, thirty.
Speaker 1: It's a little different.
Speaker 3: You say that there are roadblocks for adults and for kids.
Speaker 3: What are the sort of hurdles that we need to overcome?
Speaker 3: What are the common issues?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean so the first is just believe. You
Speaker 4: open the show at the top by talking about the
Speaker 4: United States versus other countries. You know, shared some love
Speaker 4: for Estonia, and what's happening in those countries is and
Speaker 4: it might seem so simple, but it's a big deal.
Speaker 4: Which is in those countries people start with the belief
Speaker 4: that kids can do math. So, you know, the simple
Speaker 4: parallel I give is, imagine if we put all our
Speaker 4: kids in this country in kindergarten through eighth grade, and
Speaker 4: at the end they came out and we gave them
Speaker 4: a test, and we thought the test was really high quality, and.
Speaker 5: At the end of the test the majority were illiterate.
Speaker 5: The majority couldn't read. We'd be scandalized.
Speaker 4: And what if even worse than that, a bunch of
Speaker 4: adults said that's okay, they're not reading kids. You know,
Speaker 4: we get very mad at the adults. But that's the
Speaker 4: exact same thing we're doing in math.
Speaker 1: We're talking with Shlony Sharma. She's CEO and co founder
Speaker 1: of Zuri. It's a nonprofit educational software organization. Her new book,
Speaker 1: which is what we're talking about, is entitled Mathmind, The
Speaker 1: Simple Path to Loving Math.
Speaker 3: And oh, by the way, can I just say one thing?
Speaker 3: You can say whatever you talking at the top about
Speaker 3: how the US obviously you know US kids in general
Speaker 3: aren't doing great at math compared to the kids in Singapore. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and then you mentioned Estonia. Yeah, and I made a
Speaker 3: joke about how small. I want to point out that
Speaker 3: I do love Estonia. I went there for an ECB
Speaker 3: conference to talent.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I stayed at the Hotel Telegraph, which was beautiful. Downtown
Speaker 3: is very nice. I would, as a tourist go back
Speaker 3: just to hang out. So I just want everyone from
Speaker 3: Estonia to know I do love you.
Speaker 1: Because we get hate mail, or MAC gets.
Speaker 3: Hate mail, and school that they're great at math.
Speaker 1: I want to go to chapter twelve. You say math
Speaker 1: matters for everyone, but we act as if it matters
Speaker 1: only for a select few. Our education system is built
Speaker 1: around both overt and quiet classifying of students what you
Speaker 1: have referred to as sorting. We track class says. I
Speaker 1: grew up where it was like kids are in honors math,
Speaker 1: kids were in regular math casts, kids were in math
Speaker 1: that needed help, and it was like you were you
Speaker 1: were definitely I know, like I don't even want to say,
Speaker 1: and it really put you in a certain way. And
Speaker 1: I hope my daughter's not listening. But she was in
Speaker 1: a point where she thought she wasn't good in math
Speaker 1: and got a tutor and she actually is really great
Speaker 1: in math and loves it, and so it's just but
Speaker 1: she got it in her head that she wasn't great.
Speaker 1: I really hope she's not listening. She will hate me forever.
Speaker 1: But anyway, but what we do in the US, what's
Speaker 1: wrong with what we do in the US and how
Speaker 1: we teach math, Because there was something I saw on
Speaker 1: video where you talk about math war, something the US
Speaker 1: does but other countries don't.
Speaker 4: So like your kid and millions like them were at
Speaker 4: the top of my mind when I was writing Math Mind.
Speaker 4: And we have a system and it's it's a strange
Speaker 4: one where we actually spend billions of dollars educating millions
Speaker 4: of kids by sorting.
Speaker 5: So we're trying to.
Speaker 4: Find the math kids, not just teach all kids math,
Speaker 4: which is what is happening in other countries.
Speaker 5: And kids aren't dumb, right.
Speaker 4: So you can say whatever you want put like, you know,
Speaker 4: nice things on posters, like you know, making mistakes is
Speaker 4: okay or whatever, but they know what's actually going on.
Speaker 4: And what's going on is that the way we teach
Speaker 4: in mathematics is it's a test to see if you
Speaker 4: have that rare genetic material to be able to do math,
Speaker 4: and every day you can fail the test. So, by
Speaker 4: the way, even kids who are in the honors class,
Speaker 4: they're not feeling really good either. Everyone is feeling uncomfortable.
Speaker 4: Everyone is feeling like there's this scarce, rare genetic in
Speaker 4: more material, but it's completely not born out in science.
Speaker 4: Babies as young as two weeks old understand quantities. Pigeons
Speaker 4: can count, so con dolphins, And so we just have
Speaker 4: to relax because we can all do math. And what
Speaker 4: I'd say is that doesn't mean that kids who have
Speaker 4: a deep passion for mathematics shouldn't be able to accelerate ahead.
Speaker 4: If you have a deep passion for writing or journalism,
Speaker 4: you should be able to accelerate ahead. But that doesn't
Speaker 4: mean because you accelerate ahead that I shouldn't get to
Speaker 4: have really fun and challenging writing opportunities. And so we
Speaker 4: don't have to put those things in opposition, and we
Speaker 4: don't in other fields of knowledge, but we just do
Speaker 4: it in math. I would just say it's crazy and
Speaker 4: we could.
Speaker 5: Just all stop.
Speaker 3: I want to know what the system is that you developed,
Speaker 3: or that Zern developed. I read that you guys have
Speaker 3: a system that one in four elementary school kids use,
Speaker 3: and I don't know like half of middle schoolers use,
Speaker 3: which made me curious, like, what is it? What is
Speaker 3: it like a program? Do you have materials for teachers?
Speaker 3: Is it like you know, tricks?
Speaker 1: What is it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it's a million middle school kids, but the
Speaker 4: think about so those a way I'd like to think
Speaker 4: about Zern. There's a really famous mathematician who describes our
Speaker 4: problem in middle school math in America, and he says,
Speaker 4: kids walk out of class every day like ten to
Speaker 4: twenty minutes behind in terms of confusion. Now we make
Speaker 4: that a big catastrophe, but that's all. They're just ten
Speaker 4: to twenty minutes behind. And if we could support them
Speaker 4: in their homework or with just ten to twenty minutes
Speaker 4: of additional input, then they would get it. It would click,
Speaker 4: you know, you get that aha moment in your brain.
Speaker 4: And so think of ZERN as that digital compliment. It's
Speaker 4: the ten to twenty minutes every day for teachers or
Speaker 4: for families, and unzerned dot org it's free for teachers
Speaker 4: or families, and so we provide that ten to twenty minutes.
Speaker 4: I think some of the secret sauce of ZERN is
Speaker 4: the pictures, gifts, visualizations, you know, when we're teaching. So
Speaker 4: for example, when we're teaching a fraction bigger than one hole,
Speaker 4: so eight forts, like what does that even mean? On screen,
Speaker 4: the teacher will cut two oranges into forts and you
Speaker 4: can see, well, it's two oranges and they're cut into
Speaker 4: four pieces, so that there's eight pieces.
Speaker 5: And so it moves it.
Speaker 4: From really abstract, no really knows what a force means
Speaker 4: in third grade to being extremely concrete. Everybody understands two
Speaker 4: orange just cut into four pieces, and so that that's
Speaker 4: how we're trying to support kids.
Speaker 1: Shel any I wonder AI artificial intelligence. Do you think
Speaker 1: that's going to be a good or bad thing for
Speaker 1: the world of math.
Speaker 3: Ya, do we need math? We have iPhones and.
Speaker 1: We've talked with Sacon about a lot of this in
Speaker 1: terms of what he's doing.
Speaker 3: And I'm just going to ask, Yeah, con Academy like
Speaker 3: a competitor or I mean, you're not for profit, So
Speaker 3: what do you think about that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean so I would say, there's only two
Speaker 4: sites I let my I have thirteen year old twin boys,
Speaker 4: only two sites.
Speaker 5: I let my kids on con Academy and Zern.
Speaker 4: And I know sales kids have played with Zern and
Speaker 4: I think it's really outstanding. And he does similar things
Speaker 4: with visualizations and videos. And you know, we're both nonprofits
Speaker 4: just trying to put the best education we can up
Speaker 4: online for free for everyone. You know, I think that
Speaker 4: with regard to AI, I don't know. I have no ability,
Speaker 4: no expertise, and no ability to predict where the world
Speaker 4: will go. But I'll say this, which is it makes
Speaker 4: does it seem like math is more important? And the
Speaker 4: reason for that is like today, in today's world, the
Speaker 4: single biggest predictor of getting through high school into college,
Speaker 4: graduating college, and then having a massive effect in the
Speaker 4: sum of millions of dollars on lifetime earnings. Is algebra
Speaker 4: completion just that algebra completion in your K twelve experience.
Speaker 4: And so if that's what's happening today in the world
Speaker 4: of jobs today, think about what happens in the future
Speaker 4: as numerous y and math skills become more and more
Speaker 4: expected and more and more part of every job. We
Speaker 4: already see stem jobs mixing together. We used to think
Speaker 4: stem jobs were you became an electrical engineer, you became
Speaker 4: a computer scientist.
Speaker 5: Not the case.
Speaker 4: Lots of folks who are majoring in history are actually
Speaker 4: out there doing STEM jobs.
Speaker 1: This was really fun and I feel like any of us, well,
Speaker 1: I think you certainly much of adults you resonated with,
Speaker 1: and of us you have kids. It definitely resonate.
Speaker 3: We had twenty seconds left. Who did it better? Teaching
Speaker 3: math at the university level? Brown or Harvard.
Speaker 5: Brown?
Speaker 1: Ooh, well done, well done, Sheliny, Thank you so much,
Speaker 1: good luck. Look forward to catching up with you again
Speaker 1: in the future. Shelony Sharma, she's CEO co founder of
Speaker 1: the nonprofit educational software organization ZERN. Her new book check
Speaker 1: it out. It is entitled Mathmind, The Simple Path to
Speaker 1: Loving Math cracking the numeracy code for everyone who has
Speaker 1: ever thought they were bad at math.
Speaker 3: Cool, very cool.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 3: I love I love math.
Speaker 1: I do truly I love math too. All Right, everybody,
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg.
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