Culture is defined by what we teach children
Think of a skill you wish someone had taught you when you were young -- one that would have made everything after it easier. For me it was drawing. Not stick figures, but real, dimensional drawing -- I didn't even know it had a name (construction drawing) until years later. I didn't learn it until I was already working as a professional animator, struggling through work that would have been simple if someone had just shown me this one basic skill as a child.
Here's the thing: early math has a foundation exactly like that -- and unlike drawing, we know precisely what it is and how to give it to every child.
What is construction drawing?
It's where you draw 3d forms like instead of a circle, you draw a sphere. They might look the same, but a circle is 2d and a sphere is 3d. By constructing 3d forms like spheres, cubes and cylinders, everything in your drawing looks right because it 'exists' in 3d space.
Since construction drawing can be learned by children, I recommend it as one of the first things every beginner should learn. If I had learned construction drawing as a child, I wouldn't have had to struggle in my career and drawing for tv shows would have been so. Much. Easier.
Pay it forward
So in my own family, I made sure drawing was never a mystery. My kids can ask me, ask each other, or pull up a video any time they're stuck -- and because that help is always there, drawing feels fun to them, not intimidating. That's what a culture really does: it hands the next generation a head start we had to find on our own. The same is possible with math.
Making it easier for future generations
My son didn't have to struggle because he learned the most important skill first. If he were to become a professional hand-drawn animator, he would have the advantage over others who lack basic drawing skills like construction. If the ACT tested college readiness for drawing, he would test highly in this area.
As it turned out, my son didn't want to be an animator or a comic book artist at all -- he wanted to study computer science. And to do that, he'd need to be strong in math. That got me thinking. I'm always looking for fun ways to get ahead in learning, and in math the single biggest one is learning to count with number words that carry real, logical place value. In other words, Ten One Math.
So that's what I taught him. He even helped record the voices for the games here on the site -- and in doing it, he picked up the Ten One Math number words around 5th-6th grade. It never felt like studying; it was just number games and the occasional math puzzle at the dinner table. But by high school he had jumped a full year ahead and was taking honors math for the grade above his. Our little math-based family fun time really paid off!
How can the U.S. make math fun?
In China, if a child knows the words for 1-10 they can count all the way up to 100. So easy! But in the U.S. math is hard because young children must learn 27 unique number words to count up to 100. These extra words include: eleven, twelve, twenty, etc. and they are not needed.
Teaching young children Chinese number words is the math equivalent of teaching construction drawing. By learning the most important skill first, the child will be more confident and have a significant lifelong advantage. Instead of thinking math is hard, they think it's easy and fun.
My own math education
I got lucky here. Before I even started school, an aunt spent a few months teaching me math, and we jumped several grade levels ahead. I didn't realize it then, but that head start did something bigger than teach me arithmetic -- it made me believe math was something I was good at, and that belief stuck for life. That's the real gift of an early start: not just skills, but confidence. And every child deserves it, not only the ones lucky enough to have someone step in early.
According to national ACT results only 41% of U.S. students are college-ready for math. About 1/3 of students who are college ready will become STEM graduates. I believe using regular number words in the U.S. -- like they do in countries that lead the world in math education -- might double the number of children who are college-ready for math and also double the number of STEM graduates.
You might say, that's an assumption and I would say yes, innovation relies on assumptions. The most valuable innovations like smart phones or reusable rockets rely on an assumption where somebody says: "Hey gang, the way we're doing abc is messed up and wouldn't it be better to do xyz instead?" Without testing our assumptions, there is no innovation. Innovators making assumptions and then testing them out in the real world is how we get nice things on planet earth.
Who uses regular number words to teach young children?
All of the top 7 countries in
PISA world math education skills testing use Chinese aka regular number words including: Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Japan, China and Korea. In all of these countries, children from preschool all the way up to high school outperform U.S. students
Culture changes by changing what we teach children, but it doesn't mean we change the entire education system overnight. A more conservative approach is to start on a small scale in a few Kindergarten classrooms, or with just a few parents. As history shows, just a small number of like-minded people working together can change the world.
Double the number of U.S. STEM grads
Adding another 600,000 U.S. STEM grads would be like taking all of the tech industry -- companies like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, SpaceX, etc. and doubling them -- twice the value and twice the technological output. Doubling the number of STEM graduates in the U.S. is worth trillions of dollars to the U.S. economy. The potential payoff is incalculable -- beyond any single tech innovation in history -- and it would mean our leading tech companies could hire twice as many engineers to find solutions to problems that threaten humanity. Is there any greater cause than trying to make humanity more viable?
Why this matters even more in the age of AI
There's one more reason this matters now more than ever: AI. It's tempting to assume that if computers can do the math, our kids won't need to -- but it's exactly the opposite. AI is made of math. Every model and every breakthrough is built by people who are fluent, confident, and -- yes -- actually enjoy playing with numbers. AI doesn't lower the value of strong math skills; it raises the ceiling for the people who have them.
So the number-words gap is no longer just about test scores. The nations that raise the most math-confident kids -- the ones who grow up thinking math is fun instead of scary -- will lead the defining technology of this century. And today, our irregular number words are costing us half of the STEM talent that could be building it. My son is a small example: the head start he got from playing number games at home is what made computer science -- the field powering today's AI -- feel like a door that was open to him. Imagine that door open for twice as many American kids who grew up loving math.
By the way, there is no downside to trying this out. Consider Singapore, who is ranked #1 in world math education. Singapore is bilingual, meaning preschool children learn both Chinese regular number words and English irregular number words. Children in Singapore show no ill effects of learning both regular and irregular number words, so the only real question is how much we will win? Will this be a small win, a big win, or a gigantic super win? Only one way to find out.
Science proves young children who use
regular English number words will gain a significant advantage. By trying out a science-based system of number words where 11 is ten one, 12 is ten two, and 24 is two ten four, we might significantly change U.S. culture for the better, for future generations. And we might win bigger than any of us could possibly imagine.
