FOMO to JOMO: How Math Conferences Became An Unbearable Popularity Contest of Selling Ourselves
To be honest, the impetus/momentum to write this article is coming off my experience of attending my first music festival in 20 years this past September. It was the validation that music has always been my first love and the current community in which I feel the strongest sense of belonging is therapeutically free of ego and competition — and 100% laser beam focused on music.
I would like to share some of those pictures here.
Here is the link to all the articles.
All those pictures, every single one of them, has smiles that are the result of being immersed in music and a community that celebrates that music above and beyond everything else. Conversations about music — fans with fans and fans with bands — occurred anywhere and everywhere.
In 2024, you can no longer replace the word “mathematics” with music to describe what math conferences have become. The content has taken a backseat to personalities, and whatever they have to sell…
Next week in Palm Springs is CMC-South, what used to be one of my favorite math conferences. I was accepted to do a workshop on Data Science, but relinquished the opportunity to, if I can be blunt, to protest the decision to reject this proposal(which as you can see is a keynote next year).
If it was just me, I wouldn’t have cared. But, it was my daughter. It was my daughter who was diagnosed with severe anxiety/depression/suicidal ideation when she was in grade 8. I wasn’t worried about if she was going to be ready for high school math — I was worried if she was even going to be around for high school.
The fact that mathematics is now a part of her healing journey is an amazing story. I thought it would be one that a conference like CMC-South would gladly accept.
I was wrong. It was not only a personal rejection. It was a rejection of student voice. I was a rejection of mathematics having a wider scope in our lives. And, in Shakespearean irony, it was a rejection of real life “math trauma” — not just the book version.
My daughter healed from her trauma because of math content — specifically, algebra.
Math education causes math anxiety and math trauma. And before that is math boredom. Never hear of math boredom at a math conference — that’s because it’s not on brand.
Never hear of presentations decrying standardized testing. That would go against any branding seen at math conferences.
Never hear of the rise in home schooling, micro schools, school refusal, and general mental health issues. All those are off-brand.
Mathematics lives in a caged bubble of capitalism that gleefully ignores the reality that so many students and teachers face everyday
Adding insult here was that CMC-South, without blinking, had a whole strand called “Building Thinking Classrooms” where people could apply under.
Last time I checked, that was a title of a book. Isn’t that some kind of conflict of interest? How many more sessions do we need where the writing surface is valued more than what is written on it? Now, I have gone on record of not liking the book. Big deal. But, in the cultish world of mathematics education, having a difference of opinion is sacrilege.
Whatever. This isn’t high school. Or, is it?
My daughter healed from her trauma because of math content — specifically, algebra. Never would I have thought that one day student voice, articulating her own math trauma, healed — ironically — by mathematics itself would be a story to be rejected by a math conference.
My favorite one at that.
The become below came through my Facebook feed. It’s the same way albums/CD’s used to fill my shelves. Content.
The drift away from content started years ago. To fill that void has been the steroidal injection of pedagogy and the cult of personality — math celebrities.
I am sure Eddie Woo is a nice guy. But, there is no universe where he is going to sit at a picnic table with folks, lose the edu-celebrity hat, and just yap about mathematics.
Look, it’s bad enough with the “edu-celebrity” tag, but could math education please drop the “rock star” thing? Do we really need the co-opting of the rock music by math education, and have it neutered/sterilized for branding purposes?
Pretty sure math ed isn’t thinking the images below when it comes to “rock star”. Pretty sure they are thinking of Oasis — which would be on point for bloated celebrity and ridiculous ticket prices.
So, I am going to take the advice of Buckminster Fuller.
In 2025, I am co-hosting/co-planning two math conferences which will focus 100% on content — curiosity for it and the deep,human consequences of being immersed in such content. Basically, I am trying to replicate my music festival experiences with mathematics.
The first conference will be in Banff, Alberta in mid-July.
The second one will be in Sardinia, Italy sometime in September.
If you don’t feel belonging, you then create places/events that do. I am not just talking about myself and others who lament the state of so many math conferences.
I am also talking about mathematics finding belonging again, where the words/wisdom of someone like Francis Su are thematically woven.
