I read somewhere once — no one cares where — that blanket statements are “never useful” and “vague” and “non-committal.” Well guess what assholes, so am I. Cause this blanket statement is super useful, very concise and I’m strongly committed to it:

MATH IS FUCKING DUMB.

Now I understand that math is important for some things. Mostly for determining the price of a markdown item at Banana Republic or tipping a bartender but that’s about it. I literally can’t think of a single other reason why being able to do math is even remotely necessary. Sure we should all know how to add things like 3+2 (it’s 5) or 9+12 (it’s 21, I’m pretty sure) but figuring out a fraction yourself? Bitch, please. I’d rather just live the rest of my life in blissful unknowing and be totally okay with that.

Let’s talk long division for a moment. Give that shit a rest. 2876÷24? NO. There’s a 0% chance I will ever need to figure that out in a situation where an iPhone is not present. Even in the goddamn 1980s when I learned that crotch of feces they call long division we had fucking calculators. Sure we “weren’t allowed to use them” and “had to show our work” but why? Good god why? What a pile of bullshit. No one ever got anywhere by slaving over a hot pile of crap that doesn’t evenly divide into itself so why not punch that bitch into your fucking Casio and call it a goddamn day.

Don’t even get me started on that calculus and pre-calculus bullshit. Calculus has the fucking word calculator basically RIGHT IN IT. It’s practically BEGGING YOU TO FUCKING USE ONE. And pre-calculus? Is it like a fucking training bra? Pre-calculus is like ordering your least favorite food right before ordering the food that you’re actually fucking allergic to and saying “I just feel like dying today.”

Once in high school I got 32% out of 100% on a pre-calculus test. I knew just enough math to know that wasn’t the best score in the class but was still pretty proud of it. I then had some straight talk with the teacher: “Look, is there any way possible that I can pass this class?” She looked at me long enough to exhale one completely rancid coffee-breath and replied “It doesn’t look good.”

MATH IS SO DUMB.

Then there was the whole era, we’ll call it the 90s, of “graphing calculators.” What the fuck? I mean WHAT THE FUCK? You were supposed to sucker your parents into buying you one even though they were somewhere between $72 and $900. To which your parents responded with “fuck that shit.” You both knew all along that a fancy Texas Instruments button pad would not make you good at math, nor would you even take the fucking thing out of your backpack because you would have no goddamn idea what to do with it if you did. Parabola? Cosign? Sign? Analog? Digital? Proof? X = what? N = numbers. So far as I can tell the most useful thing that ever came out of a TI-85 was some weed stored in that sweet sweet sliding case.

Now I know there are probably 2, maybe 3 of you out there who are thinking I can’t believe she’s saying these things! Math is so important! It saves lives, it takes us to the moon, blah blah blah other things I don’t care about. To which I say: All of that is probably true but maybe it’s time to examine if this is the right blog for you. My last post was about polygamy, perhaps you should consider that as a lifestyle. There’s simple math involved in that, right?

So for the love of god, stop showing your work and stop pestering your students to buy graphing calculators. If time is money you’re basically filling a garbage can with cash and setting it on fucking fire. Unless you’re actively building a functional fucking time machine put that number crunching to bed. I mean I can see a calculator literally, like RIGHT THERE. Go ahead, use it. Make this math problem go away for good. I know you want to.