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Algebra is one of the biggest hurdles to getting a high school or college degree — particularly for students of color and first-generation undergrads.
It is also the single most failed course in community colleges across the country. So if you're not a STEM major (science, technology, engineering, math), why even study algebra?
That's the argument Eloy Ortiz Oakley, chancellor of the California community college system, made today in an interview with NPR's Robert Siegel.
At American community colleges, 60 percent of those enrolled are required to take at least one math course. Most — nearly 80 percent — never complete that requirement.
Oakley is among a growing number of educators who view intermediate algebra as an obstacle to students obtaining their credentials — particularly in fields that require no higher level math skills.
Their thinking has led to initiatives like Community College Pathways, which strays away from abstract algebra to engage students in real-world math applications.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by gidds on Sunday July 23 2017, @05:23PM
While most people are unlikely to have much need for e.g. solving cubic equations, I think many are missing the real point here, which (as I see it) is that algebra is training in abstraction: throwing away the irrelevant detail and concentrating on the essential; manipulating ideas rather than numbers; thinking in generalities instead of examples; identifying and understanding the connections between different cases; working on a higher level.
Abstraction is a vital tool for mathematics, but also for computing, linguistics, philosophy, pretty much all sciences, and in fact I'd say almost any serious analytical thought.
Algebra as a course may be just about the only place that abstraction is really practised hard in school. That may be why people find it difficult; but that's also why it's so important. Not only does it give us tools for working with all sort of mathematical concepts; it also (indirectly) gives us tools for thinking.
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