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