THE CHARLOTTE

THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER

THE JOY OF MATH

CHARLOTTE SUCCESSES AND THE EXCITEMENT OF

ACHIEVEMENT

Saturday, April 4, 1998

Section: EDITORIAL

Page: 16A

By TOM BRADBURY, Associate Editor

Column: SCHOOLS AND EDUCATION * TOM BRADBURY

Illustration: Photo

Caption: Anders Kaseorg

The e-mail message from mathematician Harold Reiter at UNC Charlotte was to let me know of some local success in a state math competition last weekend. And the Internet links that led from the message reminded me that education ought to be about joy, not drudgery.

Reiter himself is not only a UNCC associate professor honored for excellence in teaching, he is something of a missionary for math. He is chairman of the American High School Mathematics Exam (and will gladly share problems that require thinking, not rote) and founded math clubs for local school kids. He's a splendid example of one of the ways the wider community benefits from higher education. While he's a wonderful story himself, what he wanted to be sure of is that we at The Observer didn't miss a local triumph.

Victory in Raleigh

The competition was for MathCounts, in which seventh and eighth graders compete as individuals and teams. Charlotteans won top state honors in both categories: * Homeschooler Anders Kaseorg, a very young eighth grader competing for the Charlotte Home Educator's Association, was the top individual in the state. He and the three youngsters who finished right behind him in Raleigh will make up North

Carolina's team at the national competition in Washington next month. Anders, who turns 12 Wednesday, is in his third math course at UNCC and plans to take computer programming there in the fall. He just finished the church basketball league, his mother said, and likes not only math but bridge, piano, chess,

computer programming - and bike riding.

* The state's top team came from Charlotte Latin School, with students Marshall Koch, Zach Guy, Blair Shwedo, Don Swartz and Manoj Lamba. Marshall Koch, who finished fifth in the state individually, will be an alternate on the state team. Their coach, Charlotte Latin math teacher Caroline Wolfe, will coach

the state team.

``It's an amazing sight up there'', Wolfe said, recalling her trip to Washington 12 years ago when Ashley Reiter (Harold Reiter's daughter) was on the team and finished third in the nation. Ashley, of course, went on to win first place in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. ``The students who do well in this, you hear from again,'' Wolfe said. Meanwhile, Wolfe will be gathering the students for practice and bonding,

including a weekend at Camp Dogwood. ``They're from four different schools,'' she notes, ``and have to learn to work as a team.''

*A human endeavor

Clicking around Harold Reiter's Internet homepage (www.math.uncc.edu/hbreiter/index.html ), I was quickly reminded of the human dimension - and the joy - of all this. His Internet page leads to all manner of places, particularly for precollege students interested in math. One of the most fascinating is the North Carolina Math Newsletter. Among other things, it contains essays from two previous editors.

One is Lenny Ng, now a graduate student at MIT, who aced the math college boards when he was 10. He was valedictorian at Chapel Hill High School, but he didn't always find schools accommodating for a very bright student. His piece in the newsletter is excerpted from a speech he gave at Harvard when he was an undergraduate there. He talked about frustrating rules, about wonderful opportunities and some sympathetic

teachers, about the blessing of ``a mind enchanted by everything from math to music, from literature to tennis.'' And then he said: ``Unfortunately, schools nowadays show a troubling tendency to emphasize feeling good' rather than excelling and to encourage their students to slip into comfortable mediocrity.''

The other is Ashley Reiter, now teaching at the Maine School of Science and Mathematics while on leave from the doctoral program at the University of Chicago. She captures the wonder of what she sees in math, the human feelings of excitement and limitation that go with it, and an intense desire to share her experience. She concludes her essay: ``I am learning not only to DO math, but to communicate it effectively to others. And as I put to use those skills of teamwork and disciplined individual work, I now strive to give my own students the opportunity to grow personally and intellectually as they study mathematics. I hope they have as much fun as I have had in the process.''

The fun of learning

``Fun'' is not the word often associated with math or school, at least not the academic side of school. And while Ashley Reiter makes it clear that life and school involve much more than academics, learning itself is fun. It is also work, and struggling to understand can be frustrating. But the exertion leads beyond.

I was delighted to find a ``For The Fun Of It'' section in the math newsletter.

The subject might be math or astronomy, history or English, chemistry or German, politics or drama, chess or crossword puzzles, computers or cars. What they share is the challenge they pose, and the excitement that comes with mastery. The joy of teaching, as Harold Reiter puts it, comes in watching students succeed.

Some people succeed at a very high level. Some, sadly, don't succeed at all, making teaching difficult and frustrating. Most of us are in the middle. We won't all find math fun, or breeze through all the problems offered at the math newsletter website, or excel in other fields. But it is not necessary to be a Michael Jordan to enjoy participating in sports, as millions of weekend athletes demonstrate. The world of the mind is just as invigorating.

*A new television series

Meanwhile, PBS is beginning a seven-part series designed to show how mathematics is found in everyday life and science. There will be a companion book by Keith Devlin, author of ``Goodbye, Descartes'' and ``Mathematics: The New Golden Age.'' Several websites have information and things to order

(www.mathlife.org and www.ti.com/calc/mathlife ).

The show is being carried on S.C. Educational Television beginning at 9 p.m. Wednesday, though the schedule shifts to Sundays at 6 p.m. after that; the Rock Hill outlet, WNSC, is available to some viewers in this area as Channel 30 over the air or on cable. Unfortunately, the show is available only at odd hours on the area's two other public television stations: The first show is 3 a.m. Thursday on Charlotte's WTVI

(704-372-2442) in Charlotte and 6 a.m. Sunday, April 19, on UNC-TV (919-549-7061). Teachers can get a guide and a low-cost condensed video from the series through the websites mentioned above or at 800-842-2737.

*Learning and civilization

Math pervades modern society, as the S.C. ETV website says -and columnist Claudia Smith Brinson writes about math on today's Viewpoint page. More generally, learning pervades society. Knowing and being able to do are vital to our success as individuals, and our survival as a civilization.

Experts are essential; we don't want our doctors and our pilots to be fumblers, or our teachers and our police. But in a democratic society, just having a few experts is not enough. Wise decisions depend on a wise public, on ordinary citizens who understand math, among many other things. The goal should be excellence, at every level, not mediocrity pretending to serve equality. It is important that we nurture and educate everyone: those who can win contests and those who never will.

without permission.