For nearly three decades, John Mighton’s career has defied categorization. His plays, including Half Life, The Little Years, A Brief History of Night and Possible Worlds (which was made into a film starring Tilda Swinton) have won every major playwriting award in his native Canada, including—on two separate occasions—the country’s highest literary honor, the Governor General’s Award. After almost failing Math as an undergrad, he now holds a Ph.D. in the subject from the University of Toronto, and in 2005 was named a Fellow of the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences. He has taught university courses in Philosophy (Reasoning and Argument Analysis) and Mathematics (Graph Theory), and, after serving as a math consultant on Gus Van Sant’s 1997 film Good Will Hunting, was cast in the role of Matt Damon’s tutor. He is also the bestselling author of The Myth of Ability and The End of Ignorance, two books on intelligence, creativity and learning, but it is a charitable organization called JUMP—Junior Undiscovered Math Prodigies—that John founded in 2001 which he cherishes most.

What started in 1998 as an after-school tutoring centre run out of his own apartment (and staffed entirely by unpaid friends in Toronto’s theatre community) has grown into an organization that provides tens of thousands of elementary school students with a radical alternative to the conventional mathematical curriculum taught in most schools. 

Mighton’s unorthodox approach to teaching the subject, which centers on an intuitive pedagogy not reliant on expensive textbooks, has been met with strong resistance, both from traditionally-minded governments and school boards, as well as the multi-billion-dollar consulting and textbook-publishing industries that lobby them. 

In all his pursuits Mighton challenges the societal beliefs and educational structures that cleave the arts from the sciences, insisting that the potential for high-level proficiency in both is intrinsic in our species’ natural urge toward creativity.  

We met early on a summer evening, in his office at the University of Toronto. He is notoriously shy, and so soft-spoken that—even with two recording devices—I had to replay parts of our 2-hour-long conversation several times in a silent room to transcribe his words. 

When I arrived John began struggling to clear a spot for me at a desk that was obscured by mounds of paperwork. Just as I sat down, he got up and went to the window. “I’m sorry,” he said, drawing open the blinds, “But none of the lights in here are working. I’ve been meaning to do something about it for ages, but I can never seem to get around to it.” 

—Marc Bendavid

I. Personality?

THE BELIEVER: When did...