Is algebra necessary? The education realist recaps the major points of view:
Hacker:
We shouldn’t make everyone take algebra. No one needs algebra anyway; we never really use it. Statistics would be much more useful. Algebra is the primary obstacle to high school success; millions of kids are failing because they can’t manage this course. If we just allowed students to have an easier time in high school, more of them would graduate successfully and go on to college.
Outraged Opposition:
Algebra is essential to college success and “real life” and one of many obstacles to high school success. No one is happy with the current state of affairs, but it’s clear that kids aren’t learning algebra because their teachers suck, particularly in elementary school. We need to teach math better in the lower grades, rather than lower our standards. Besides, the corollary to “not everyone should take algebra” is “some people should take algebra” and just how are you planning to divide up those teams? (Examples: Dan Willingham, Dropout Nation)
Judicious Analysis:
Sigh. Guys, this is really a debate about tracking, you know? And no one wants to go there. While it’s true that algebra really isn’t necessary for college, colleges use success in advanced math as a convenient sorting mechanism. Besides, once we say algebra isn’t necessary, where do we stop? Literature? Biology? Chemistry? But without doubt, Hacker is right in part. Did I say that no one wants to go there? Or just hint it really, really loudly?
Examples: Dana Goldstein, Justin Baeder Iand II.
Voldemort Support:
Well, of course not everyone should take algebra, trig, or calculus. Or advanced literature. Or science. Not everyone has the cognitive ability or the interest. We should have a richer and more flexible curriculum, allowing anyone with the interest to take whatever classes they like with the understanding that not all choices lead to college and that outcomes probably won’t have the racial distributions we’d all prefer to see. Oh, and while we’re at it, we should be reviewing our immigration policies because it’s pretty clear that our country doesn’t need cheap labor right now.
Hacker, Outraged Opposition and Judicious Analysis to Voldemort Support:
Shut up, racist!
Thanks, Voldemort, you rotten racist.
But “….We should have a richer and more flexible curriculum,….”
Strike “we should”.
Replace with “It’s possible for one to create” and I am with you.
That “should” stuff smacks of forcing people to do something ‘for their own good.’ You sly, progressive racist, you.
I’m inclined to post a longer response, that’s mostly off-topic.
Algebra is the foundation of post-arithmetic math. You can’t do any other math without it, and you can’t do any science or much programming without understanding it — understanding, not just being able to do.
As a foundation for liberal education, Algebra is much like reading, writing, and programming in that it foundationalizes huge areas of thought. And therefore someone without the ability to think that way is properly understood to be deficient.
Now, having the ability to think in many ways is only one type of skill — one highly regarded among the thoughtful, but perhaps less than necessary for someone who’s going to be an assembly line worker, or customer service rep.
The question is whether college exists to teach you to think or to teach you to do stuff related to your eventual career. Insofar as the second is winning the argument ATM, Algebra appears to be unneccessary, except in the occupations that pay well.
I remember getting to algebra in eighth grade — the earliest they’d let anyone into algebra in my school system at the time — and thinking, “Wait, why did we waste the last three or four years solving algebra problems without algebra?”
That’s a fascinating question. I’m not sure, and I’ve never approved of it, nor did the elementary school teacher who helped me jump past those four grades of math directly into Algebra.
Nor, however, do I approve of trying to understand physics without the tools Newton had to invent to understand it.
I remember watching something on TV where they pointed out that most children have no idea what the equals sign means. They don’t understand that the left side and the right side of the equation are effectively the same thing — and thus you can perform the same operation to each side and maintain equality.
This rings true. I can certainly remember first-grade math problems where they used an empty box instead of an x in simple arithmetic equations — e.g., 4 + x = 7, with the x depicted as an empty box — and my parents would say, “seven minus four is three, right?” It seemed to work, but I had no idea they were using simple algebra, and I had no systematic way to recreate their process.
Later, of course, we spent years doing time-rate-distance problems and other quintessentially algebraic manipulations with no mention of the simple rules and principles at work. I’m pretty sure I was the only kid who felt cheated when we got to algebra, though.