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Is algebra an unnecessary stumbling block in US schools?
- cafard 11y agoI have no idea. However, I suspect that HN is not a good place to look for insight, given the presumably small portion of the readership that ever had problems with algebra and the presumably large portion that regularly uses math beyond arithmetic.
- PhantomGremlin 11y agoIt's even worse than requiring Algebra I. A typical college here, Oregon State University, has this high school requirement:[1] Mathematics 3 years Culminating at the Algebra II level or higher Algebra II, viewed in isolation, is truly useless for 99% of people. Who needs to factor 5th degree polynomials in real life?[2] The only purpose of teaching that sort of math in high school is to hope it generalizes to other problem solving skills. But if that's the goal, why not make it more explicit by changing the curriculum? Having said that, nobody is getting into a "good" school without good SAT or ACT scores, and those do require more than a modicum of math. [1] http://oregonstate.edu/admissions/main/admission-requirements-1 http://oregonstate.edu/admissions/main/admission-requirement... [2] when I was helping my daughter with Algebra II, Wolfram Alpha made it very easy to check our work.