I hate maths. All the maths, not just one, so suck it American English. Yet when I was 12, I was in the “advanced” math class. I don’t know why or how. And what I hated more than anything was when I would go to the bother of figuring out the math in whatever backwards, bonkers way my non-maths brain could figure, only to be told: “SHOW YOUR WORK”. It was not enough that I got the question correct? If I had gotten it wrong, sure, fair to ask me how I got it. But a correct answer? You want me to explain to you, the teacher, how math problems are solved? Do you think I just guessed the answers of however many questions were on this test and got them all correct? What are you, hourly? (That joke doesn’t work because fucking christ can you imagine if we paid teachers a decent hourly rate for the hours they actually work because holy shit I’d be rich right now due to inherited wealth from my mother’s long hours at home correcting tests and lesson planning and a million other things teachers have to do outside classroom hours. If wishes were horses.)
(If anyone contacts me about the merits of “show your work“, I will curse you to have itchy genitals forever. Let a bitch yell about stuff.)
A lot of practical applications of math will lead you to alternative ways of coming to the right answer (or the right enough answer). Ask anyone who works in food or retail. Or people with weird synesthesia like me whose brain assigns genders and personalities to numbers, trust me, you don’t want me to show my work unless you wanna see shit like this:
I shouldn’t have to prove the answer to the problem or question when you already know the correct answer because you have you have an answer sheet in front of you.
When you get from point A to point B in a different way than those around you, they get confused. “Are you a witch? A liar? What do you mean there are people who don’t share my exact lived experience and much of it comes from systemic issues I am a part of? You definitely sound like a witch.” I hear them say. This attitude is present in all sorts of industries and niches, from math teachers who can only teach math in one way, to “leftists” who think you can only understand political issues by reading the works of long-dead dead white men.
There are just some things that don’t need proving, because they’ve already been proved. I don’t need to explain why the sky is blue or my reasons for believing the sky is blue when the question is “what color is the sky?”. I don’t have to produce a degree in fashion for you if the dress I made fits. I don’t need to prove to you that giving everyone on Earth access to consensual healthcare is a universal good. And it doesn’t matter if it’s because I selfishly want better healthcare, or if I selfishly want my community to function, if I genuinely care about the health and well being of my neighbors and loved ones, or a giant, talking sea turtle gave me the idea in a dream. How we make medical care more accessible matters, sure. But the explanation of how I came to the conclusion that healthcare makes society better is irrelevant when there is no counter-argument and you already know what the outcome will be because you have all of human history as proof. You have the answer sheet, and any demand for me to prove how I came to the conclusion that access to health care as a common good is disingenuous. You know the answer. I know the answer. Let us not deal in bullshit and move on.
Not everything is champagne. You don’t need to grow your answers, beliefs, or conclusions in one region of reality for it to count. Who cares what it’s called if it’s made the same, and tastes the same, and does the same thing? If the outcome is the same, why are you whinging about regions of France (hey, I live in that region of France!)? You don’t need to see my work, just enjoy your bubbly drink and shut the fuck up.
