The Washington Post trumpets in a headline that students in a culinary arts class are getting “discreet” lessons in math and chemistry.
Here’s the only paragraph that even mentions math or chemistry:
But it’s also a discreet way to teach subjects typically found in textbooks: Students explore the chemistry involved in baking. They have to learn to read recipes and scale them up, which—as any home cook who’s ever prepared meals for a large group knows—can involve complex arithmetic.
I have three issues with the story that are big enough to bring them up at all:
- If math and chemistry are the first words in the headline, the story should be more about math and chemistry.
- By emphasizing math and chemistry in the headline, editors have taken a punch away from the story’s main idea.
- The math is not “complex arithmetic,” as the writer claims, since multiplying a recipe is something that should be understood way before high school.
The high school in the story is in Virginia, which has not adopted the Common Core State Standards, but in states where the new standards have been adopted, the concept of ratios and proportions is developed in sixth and seventh grades.
In sixth grade, students use ratio tables and unit rates to solve problems, but when they get to seventh grade, their understanding expands to include problems that are more easily solved with cross-multiplication or algebraic reasoning.
For example, if a recipe for buttermilk requires ¾ teaspoon of butter for every 2 cups of milk, how many teaspoons of butter are required if you want to use 3 cups of milk? See Common Core math standard 7.RP.3 for more information.
One approach, which can happen in sixth grade under the Common Core, is to find the unit rate (How many teaspoons of butter do you need for each cup of milk?). Then, given that, multiply it by 3.
In seventh grade, though, students might choose a more efficient route to solve this problem. Using a sense of algebra, they might recognize that 3 is 1½ times 2. Therefore, the amount of butter needed, let’s call it x, would = 1½ × ¾, which is a one-step process:
We might also expect some of them to solve the problem using cross multiplication, understanding that the two ratios are equivalent: ¾ tsp is to 2 cups as x tsp is to 3 cups:
So, while I appreciate the attempt on the part of the Post’s editors to highlight the fact that you can’t really expect to have a good job in a kitchen without some minimal understanding of ratios and proportions, it’s regrettable that they put that in the headline on an otherwise nice story about preparing students for the workforce, whether they decide to attend college or not.