Illiteracy vs. Innumeracy

Apparently, math people are mad that the rest of us think they're really smart. Yesterday I was reading Slate's Dear Prudence column, and someone with a heavy-duty math job wrote in complaining that when she reveals her occupation, people always make self-deprecating remarks about how they could never do something so complicated. The writer made the comment that it's acceptable to talk about being bad at math, but it's unacceptable to say that you can't read. This echoes an interview with Neil Degrasse Tyson that I read (in Time, I think) a while back. He made the same point: in our society, innumeracy is okay, while illiteracy is not. I took issue with Tyson when I read that, for this simple reason: When people say they are bad at math, they are not saying that they can't count or do simple four-function math. They are saying that calculus scares the bejeezus out of them. That's not innumeracy; that's just the way it is.

Do you know what happens when people find out that you have an English degree or, God forbid, teach English? They almost always disparage their own grammatical skills or confess to reading something like Twilight with a sheepishness better suited to farting in an elevator. That sounds a lot like the same thing Dr. Tyson complains about. Do I dismiss those people as illiterate? Of course not. They can read the paper, magazines, websites--every crucial thing that gets them through life, but they feel intimidated by Shakespeare and diagramming. That's only a problem if you are, in fact, an English teacher.

So in my opinion, this illiteracy vs. innumeracy argument isn't even comparing apples and oranges. It's comparing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to Noix de St. Jacques Pôelées au Champagne at Les Halles prepared by Anthony Bourdain himself. Comparing basic literacy with fluency in algebra and beyond? Shouldn't these big-brains be smarter than that?