Commentary Perhaps Alan Erisman, who headed a team of applied mathematicians at Boeing, sums the education of numbers up best. Says Erisman, author of the upcoming book The Math Myth:  “If we taught English the way we teach math, students would spend all their time doing spelling tests and diagraming sentences but never read a great book or ever read poetry.” That seems to be one of the issues the California’s Instructional Quality Commission is seeking to address as it updates its list of suggestions to math instructors. It’s seeking to determine how to help students reach the math standards established by the state. Former U.S. assistant secretary of education for planning, education and policy development Williamson Evers said the commission may have overstepped its original position. Evers, now a senior fellow at the Oakland, Calif.-based Independent Institute, wrote an opinion piece about the matter to expose the issue. In …