“Counted Out” is is a very well-intentioned, sweet film about the importance of math education. Unfortunately, it is at root fatally misguided, and thereby damaging to both education and equality.

Many of us entered the world of education hoping to end educational and economic inequalities — yet our goal remains maddeningly elusive. I will be writing a series of articles examining how the misdiagnosis of causes has actually (unintentionally or not) made things worse.

“Counted Out” https://www.countedoutfilm.com/

is a documentary with a message: that knowledge of math is the gateway to individual power and money, and is the collective path to a better world. The film intersperses various talking heads with the stories of several individuals – a young mother working a low-paying job, a criminal unfairly denied parole, and a few young people who seem unlikely to succeed – each of whom overcomes math anxiety to achieve success in math, leading respectively to a better job, freedom, and new opportunities. Of the talking heads, the most prominent is Bob Moses, the civil rights leader who established the Algebra Project, and inspired many math teachers (including myself) by declaring algebra to be the civil rights issue of our time, as the “gatekeeper” to higher education and professional careers.

Vicki Abeles, the film’s director, previously directed “Race to Nowhere,” a wonderful movie decrying the increasing stress that students and families are under, caused by “our competitive high stakes culture.” (Abeles, in https://www.salon.com/2015/10/31/were_destroying_our_kids_for_nothing_too_much_homework_too_many_tests_too_much_needless_pressure/) Ironically, “Counted Out” is in part a reversal of that message.

The postulates in “Counted Out” are: 1) Success in math, algebra in particular, provides access to a (materially) good career, home ownership – “the American Dream.” 2) Our society is built on math: “The people we date, the news we see, the influence of our votes, the candidates who win elections, the education we have access to, the jobs we get—all of it is underwritten by an invisible layer of math that few of us understand, or even notice.” Thus, we need everyone to “understand the math that undergirds our society.” (Quotes from “Counted Out” website.) 3) There is a way to teach math that makes success possible more probable for everyone.

I taught math for 19 years at Berkeley High School. For more than half of those years I would have readily accepted those three postulates. I think that most of my colleagues still do. But I gradually came to understand that each is a dangerous fallacy.

1) First we need to clarify whether our goal is only to provide all children with equal opportunities to achieve material success: decent pay, healthcare, housing – or do consider those to be human rights? Both could be termed equality, but there’s a big difference; “Counted Out” advocates only for the former. Even if every child were to be successful in math, the same number would still go without, because the cause of poverty is our economic system: some jobs pay much, much more than other jobs. A mathematically literate world will still need just as many people to be childcare workers – a crucial and personally rewarding job that pays nothing. If we want to reduce economic inequality we need to do so directly, through a mix of progressive taxes, Medicare for All, guaranteed income, etc.

2) To “understand the math that undergirds our society” is a tall order. While a knowledge of arithmetic suffices for a retail worker to make change, the algorithms which are used in dating apps, news feeds, AI, cryptography, or determining whether a state district map is or isn’t gerrymandering (the first example in the film) – is well beyond high school math, and probably beyond the math that any but a STEM major would learn. And a PhD in math is no guarantee that a person won’t use their knowledge selfishly or for ill by working on Wall Street, for the NSA, for oil companies, or in weapons design. The root problems in our society arise not a lack of math knowledge, but from a lack of empathy.

3) It’s one thing to say that we believe all children can succeed, but quite another to say they all have an equal chance at success. There is no way that any teacher, with any curriculum and pedagogy, can make up for the obstacles faced by children of low-income families. Studies going back 20 years have shown (Sean Reardon et al) that a family’s wealth is the main factor in predicting a child’s educational success: there is a massive gap in outcomes between the wealthy and the poor. It doesn’t need to be nearly as large as it is to ensure that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer – again, class rigidity is determined by economic policies – so the modest improvements of one educational method over another won’t make much difference.

A few other thoughts: on point #1, as mentioned above, “Counted Out” is nearly a retraction of Abeles’ earlier “Race to Nowhere” in that by raising the stakes for learning math, it increases the very stress that her earlier film found damaging. Teachers complain endlessly about how students increasingly develop strategies to improve grades at the expense of true learning. On point #3, “Counted Out” invites the same teacher and public education-bashing we hear from the Right: if every student really can succeed (Bob Moses says, “Don’t tell me it’s not doable!”), then why is there so much failure? “Counted Out” suggests it must be the curriculum, the pedagogy, and the teacher, while ignoring the enormous impact of economic inequality. By putting the blame on teachers, “Counted Out” acts to distract us from addressing inequality, the true culprit. It’s bad enough to have to combat deliberate misinformation from the Right; it’s arguably worse when we get the same message from misguided liberals. These two (supposedly) opposing groups have together shifted the conversation to an argument over “progressive” versus “traditional” pedagogy – while capitalism is allowed to rage on, like an unattended wildfire.

In conclusion: though I enjoyed the stories of the featured students, and the sweet human moments in this film, and it may have some positive impact in promoting the importance of developing classroom community and project-based learning — though only in a general way. Ultimately, though, by failing to recognize let alone address the impact of our failing economic system upon learning and quality of life, it acts to prolong the struggle for equal opportunity for happiness.