Edward C. Ennels was a math professor, so we know he can count. This is a good thing. While he’s behind bars, he can count all the way up to $60,000, which is the amount of restitution money he owes for taking bribes from his former students.
That was apparently quite a grading system Ennels devised over at the Baltimore City Community College. For $300, students could buy an A. For $250, a B. For $150, a C.
So last week, Maryland Atty. Gen. Brian Frosh said in a statement that Ennels himself gets a failing grade — not only for math, but for integrity.
Over seven months last year, Frosh said, Ennels solicited bribes from 112 students. And over seven years, 2013 to 2020, Ennels sold 694 online access codes — at $900 each — that allowed students to view instructional material and complete assignments.
For all of this, Ennels was sentenced last week to 10 years behind bars, with all but one year suspended, on charges of bribery and misconduct in office. After jail time, he’ll face five years of probation, and the $60,000 in restitution money.
It’s easy enough to criticize Ennels, 45, a veteran of 15 years in the classroom. He not only looked to turn a profit, but to cash in on the raw anxiety so many students have with math.
Some of us just aren’t very good at numbers. My friend Rafael Alvarez, the writer, jokingly refers to subtraction as “addition’s tricky friend.” I still tremble over a math teacher I had in high school, Mr. Bachman, who announced our numerical grades at the end of each quarter.
When he got to one poor fellow, Bachman announced, “Theodore … 12.”
Yes! A 12 average! Out of 100!
Some people just aren’t very good at math — and that gets us back, obliquely, to Ennels. The crime here isn’t just Ennels taking money. It’s all those students who were desperate enough to pay serious bribe money to get a passing grade.
I have no doubt — none — that some of them spent years in school asking, “Why do I have to take this math course?”
I’m not talking about basic math. Obviously, we need to learn the essentials.
But there comes a point, maybe in high school, certainly in college, where it’s clear that certain students have no need to learn algebra or trigonometry or calculus, or other higher math which will not cross their paths even once for the rest of their lives.
But such courses are often required for graduation. And I’ve never understood why. Why does an English major, or someone studying history or foreign languages, or a future second-grade teacher, have to get past some college algebra class that doesn’t touch even vaguely on his or her field of study?
Educators will say it’s part of a “well-rounded” education, and that it teaches us analytical thinking.
Baloney.
It teaches us to dread schooling, which should be a joyful experience — or at least a valuable one.
Prof. Ennels took that dread and decided to cash in on it.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books. His most recent, “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age,” was reissued in paperback by the Johns Hopkins University Press.
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