Conrad Wolfram, CEO of Wolfram Cos., is calling for an education overhaul when it comes to teaching mathematics to students. While speaking at the Ericsson Business Innovation Forum in Sweden, he made his message clear.
“The math that people are being taught isn’t matching up to what they need,” Wolfram stated in his opening remarks.
Fixing the problem is simple and starts with teaching students math they can use in the real world, he said, explaining that current math problems in schools involve students solving problems by hand, but in the real world people solve those problems with computers.
“Unless we fix that underlying problem, math education everywhere – including in Sweden – will fail us,” Wolfram said. He believes that instead of writing out math problems, students should be required to solve problems on computers using steps.
“You’ve got to ask why we’re spending 12 years of their life doing that when I can do it by talking to my phone,” he said.
While Wolfram believes teaching every student classic mathematical equations is a waste of time and outdated, he said students who are interested in solving math problems by hand should have that option. He also said most people don’t realize that removing the computer from math removes most of the context, which includes mobile telephones, data science and statistics, subjects that did not exist before computers.
Wolfram, who started computerbasedmath.org in an effort to create a new curriculum, believes students would be best equipped if they were required to learn how to code in schools. “It’s simply the way you communicate in the modern world, you write code,” he said.
