Seriously, this person should be shot for even mentioning this fluff. Apparently algebra, otherwise known as "How many ways you can multiply by 1" should not be required of students.

http://www.nytimes.com/...l?_r=1&pagewanted=all

maybe we should start handing out Participation ribbons in math too since that's what phys ed has turned into. :P winning sucks.

It's a pretty interesting article actually. I think a lot more thought needs to go into how we structure our education system, whose construct is far outdated. The reason mathematics and sciences are so emphasized is because in the early stages of industrialization there was a need to produce workers with foundation in these subjects to work in factories and as engineers. Society has changed and so to should our education system change.

The author presents a good point, "how many people actually need a basis in algebra to do their job?" . Sure on ee, most of us are math nerds (myself included), but who actually uses polynomial equations, sine graphs, and trig after school? Hell i took a slew of math classes in high school and university, most concepts of which still aren't relevant even though i'm an engineer. Even with the engineering jobs i have had, i found my past schooling wasn't entirely useful as you learn most of what you need to know on the job (mind you i'm a civil engineer, so i won't speak for everyone). Most classes you take, you just forget a semester later anyway, so what's the point? What were useful skills to have entering the workforce though? Being able to communicate, being organized, knowing how to manage oneself and having discipline, problem solving skills and having an idea how to approach complex situations. Even learning how to control your motivation is important. Some of these were peripherally gained in school, but mostly i picked these up from my own experiences outside the classroom.

There are highly specialized job that require lots of study and training, without a doubt, but our goal for education should be to build a strong foundation for people to function successfully in the real world. Just my thoughts anyway. Also i'm not trying to hate on math, i personally love looking at the world through the lens of mathematics, but a lot of what's taught is not essential for everyone.

You're right. Society has changed. We would seriously benefit from about 3x as many programmers, on all levels. Therefore, they need to learn their god damned math.

trig is extremely useful as a carpenter, or some form of construction. As a sound engineer, I am using basic physics, AS WELL AS ALGEBRA (ZOMG!!) to work out delays for delay stacks, and also for optimal sound coverage, correcting phasing issues, and working out an optimum room layout as well as being able to identify potential resonant frequencies which will need cutting to prevent feedback.
As a storeman, a solid grounding in mathematics is always handy, being able to multiply quantities in a hurry mentally is useful when checking off goods inwards or outwards, for starters. Being able to take stock of what is on the shelf once again requires a solid ability to do mental maths.
All the skills you just mentioned are also gained outright from school, and you are a fool if you think otherwise.
Communication, time management, discipline... Ever do a school project or assignment that needed to be in by a specific time?
Problem solving skills, and learning how to approach complex situations? we had awesome prac classes and take home projects where we had to do things like build a working land yacht, or a bridge out of spaghetti & hot glue in a classwide competition to see who could build a bridge that could hold the most weight. (examples off the top of my head).
The education system is dumbed down enough already, making it dumber is NOT going to help society as a whole.
It's already bad enough that in the education system over here, a teacher is NOT allowed to say "no, your answer is wrong, but instead have to say something along the lines of "that's nearly right have another try"

What's hard in algebra? Elementary students can easily learn algebra

I think there is a distinction between "basic algebra" and "advanced algebra".

Basic algebra and trigonometry should be required (i.e, how to solve an equation with 1 unknown, and probably also solving 2 equations with 2 unknowns, ratios, fractions, etc.) Stuff you encounter in everyday life

Advanced algebra should not be required (differentiation, integration, matrix multiplication, vectors, mathematical induction, proofs, statistics, complex numbers, etc) unless it is a prerequisite for something else (Engineering, for example).



The problem though, is that when a child is young, you generally want to teach a bit of everything so that when he is older, he is able to better pick what he wants to pursue.

+1 Wharfed
+1 Xinhuan

Absolutely, Algebra is important. Don't expect that kids have chosen their "future career" and whether or not they will need Algebra by the time they finish Middle School.

We teach a lot of stuff people end up not needing later. It is about equal opportunity. If you move up enough in ANY industry, to executive management, you WILL need a basic understanding of many subjects and math becomes increasingly important (for increasingly complex finance if not LOB applications).

I don't work in a field that requires much science currently, but I consider my understanding of biology, chemistry, genetics, basic microbiology and biochemistry, etc. key to being a useful member of society who can understand, think about and comment on these subjects when they arise. This includes being able to read articles about new discoveries and understand what they mean, or to comment on public policy debates about research, funding, etc.

An educated society is not just about a person's "day job".

I tend to think that jobs requiring no education will slowly be replaced by robots; so I'd tend to think we should still teach math.


Algebra is pretty damned basic when it comes to math; you can't *DO* most math without algebra -- and most advanced fields require a solid understanding of alegbra I would think.


I think the problem is that people keep getting skipped along (no child left behind?) when they haven't learned the basics and then can't do anything when they're pushed further; hold them back when they're younger if they're not performing.

Probably more people than those who need to understand Emily fluffinson's poetry for their job.

Just going to leave this here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...7/30/gJQAr6xMKX_blog.html

Also, I tried really hard to read this in an angry tone, and I just could not do it. The tone of the piece is way to mellow.

Personally I think school needs to harder and more challenging. As it is, people tend to spend a lot more time chilling instead of learning. You only have to look at the amount of time people actually spend studying vs leisure time. It's why people in developing nations have overtaken those in so called developed nations such as the United States. People no longer care as much about getting an education so much as "getting by". Making it easier by dropping "hard subjects" is only going to hurt growth in the long term as a result of the "dumbing-down" of education.

A true measure of a nation's worth is its intellectual capital. With a highly educated workforce, you're more likely to achieve technological prowess (and I don't mean that intangible time-wasting crap tech companies are so focused on, instead of creating real value and products that could help create more jobs). The US is still the top in research and innovation, mostly as a result of the policies of previous decades. However Korea, India and China are catching up fast in those fields. Just look at the National Spelling Bee in the US. Indians have been dominating that contest for years...and English is not even their mother tongue.

Kinda off topic but here's something interesting I found regarding the value/earning potential of a degree :

http://cew.georgetown.edu/whatsitworth/

I have to disagree with you iNouda. Korea has one of the highest suicide rates in the world due to "education". I do agree that education should be more challenging but not necessarily in the same way you're talking about. The ability to think and the curiousity/drive to know and learn is a lot more important in my opinion but I am thinking in the context of the Malaysian education system which puts us at a great disadvantage.

Anyway, in response to the original article, I agree with Xinhuan, the basics should be learned (you don't lose anything by learning them). I was an English Lit major so I didn't need to use any math ever (except when I shop shoe sales) and now I work in an office that actually requires me to use math all the time because of all the financial reports I have to audit. I think it's always good to have a range of knowledge anyway since in the working arena (unless you are doing something really specific), you never know if this knowledge will come in handy (as an English Lit major working in the field of global change science research, I am very happy I took IB Chemistry and Biology and my dad made me read all kinds of things and exposed me to all kinds of international social events...or I couldn't function as well in my office)

How true! As a current engineering student I totally know what you are saying, I had someone ask me like a month after my last calc class what I had done in the class and I was like... "uhhh.. some integrals and 3d graphing and stuff....." I am no genius but I got like a B in the class so its not like i didn't try :). Calc is obviously not algebra but understanding why something is important is half the battle of learning it. If students, such as myself, understand why they should learn what they are learning they will try harder and do better, at least that is true for myself. It's hard to get motivated to study for something you don't think you need to know.

In my opinion and from my experience (I'm an elementary school teacher) the only math that should be mandatory at any level should be practical real world math. Working with money. Calculating elapsed time. Estimate volume and surface area etc. Beyond that all we're doing is forcing kids to learn about something that they'll never use when they could be spending that time learning about something that has real value.

Education isn't simply about teaching kids what they'll need to solve any practical problems in their life. Education is about making more complete citizens who will not only have a basis of knowledge to hopefully help with their practical problems but that will also be smart enough to make good civic decisions and happy enough to be able to appreciate how amazing and beautiful (most of) the world around us is.

Having said that, there probably is a need to restructure our education system to have it make more sense for the 21st century, but cutting algebra isn't the solution to that.

You mean like English? Or History? Or Biology? Or Philosophy?

I've never needed to know any of Shakespeare's sonnets for my job.
I've never needed to know the history of Rome or the Incas or Japan for my job.
I've never needed to know how to dissect a frog for my job.
I've never needed to understand Plato or Socrates for my job.

If you want to only learn useful information, why pick on mathematics as the culprit? Mathematics is far more useful than most other subjects in school.

We let people graduate from college with a degree in Art History. What the fluff are they going to do with that? We've got far too many people graduating from college with completely useless degrees. We could use a few people with degrees in these subjects, but we're finding tons of people going to college and choosing to major in these useless subjects because something like Mathematics is too hard for them.

If you get a degree in Mathematics, it shows that you can handle a difficult topic, and that you can work with numbers and use logic. If you have a degree in Art History, it shows that you're an expert at wasting 100 grand, or however much your college education cost. And you have no useful employable skills. But you're great at taking the easy way out.

Academia is a plague. And the plague is the useless crap they teach, of which Mathematics is near the very very bottom of the list in uselessness.

Holy crap - SERIOUSLY??? Yeah, let's take math out of the curriculum entirely because it's *hard*... and cut entire generations of future engineers and scientists off at the knees. Good gawd - we're already handing out medals to everyone who shows up, and not keeping score in sports matches so that nobody feels like a loser. Why don't we just do away with school altogether, and raise an entire generation of illiterate resource-suckers who aren't fit to hold any kind of job?

The purpose of school is not only to teach life skills, but also to illuminate and spark interest in the minds of children as to the possibilities life holds. When a child excels at math, doors open - astronaut, physicist, engineer, architect, nobel prize winner...

If we stop teaching the subjects that spark interest, how are those kids going to know what possibilities are open to them? Or perhaps we'll just let every kid become an astronaut in the near future, so nobody feels left out.

BAH. Life has losers, people - it's time we stopped coddling kids and prepared them for the real world, instead of the Barney-laced utopia that they're being led to expect.

i think we should speed up our math classes. teach algebra and calc in high school. also stop the memorization of formulas. for physics classes they give you a formula sheet with F=MA but calc you get nothing and the formulas are much more complicated.

i personally did great with algebra but then struggled with trig and calc.

we shouldnt be slowing down the amount if information we get but speed it up. if you cant remember your classes maybe you should stop texting during class and pay attention

Hmmmmmmm...I'm more perplexed as to why we have this notion that we're all the same. Each person is different in their own right. I've met people that couldn't solve a simple math problem, but could have a broken vehicle running in a matter of minutes where the straight A students would be scratching their heads.

As Einstein said: If you judge a fish by it's ability to climb a tree, you will always have a stupid fish. (or something like that).

Let people choose for themselves. They will find their own way.

The quote is "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."


Also: http://i.imgur.com/JmayR.jpg

I agree. I'm not entirely certain why I teach half the stuff the curriculum requires me to teach. I try to find real world applications/twists to everything, but for some material it seems impossible.