Central Virginia Schools 10, The Washington Post 0

Middle school students in central Virginia have proved one thing, they are smarter than Richard Cohen of the Washington Post.

Now, you would think that someone, who writes for the Washington Post would be part of the cream on the top, insightful, intelligent, able to parse facts, and have the logic of a giant.

Well, that giant tumbles to the ground when he writes that math is not important, and our area students who are engaged in a "Math Counts" contest rise to the top.

Richard Cohen says:

"I can do my basic arithmetic all right (although not percentages) but I flunked algebra (once)..."

"Gabriela, sooner or later someone's going to tell you that algebra teaches reasoning. This is a lie propagated by, among others, algebra teachers. Writing is the highest form of reasoning. This is a fact. Algebra is not. The proof of this, Gabriela, is all the people in my high school who were whizzes at math but did not know a thing about history and could not write a readable English sentence."

Kudos to the students in the "Math Counts" contest, and shame on Richard Cohen of the Washington Post who proves his ignorance. May he be short changed at his local convience store.