Quote:
Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery
I don't disagree with the general premise laid out by you, Arthur, Karthik, and others about the ability to reason and critical thinking skills that are cultivated by algebra. In fact, I strongly agree. But what I meant by "discrete skill" was that algebra as a tool isn't particularly useful to a large portion of the population (though ManicMechanic makes a strong counterpoint to this). You don't need algebra to balance your checkbook or figure out your monthly finances. Most people are probably never going to balance an equation outside of an academic setting.
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I agree with you. My question is, how often are the discrete skills we teach useful to a large portion of the population? Reading (at tax form and newspaper level) and addition (arithmetic), sure. But manual matrix row reduction and analyzing causes of corruption in the Janissary corps? The school algebra curriculum is made up of a lot of discrete sub-skills that themselves bare no real impact on daily life. The same way basically every other subject is. I can certainly expound on uses for and abilities cultivated by these*, but to argue that algebraic computations are unique in their uselessness seems inaccurate to me.
This is not to say it mightn't warrant additional attention, if only due to its relatively spectacular corruption from critical thinking skills and/or its supreme difficulty for many students. I'm not sure that this is actually true, but if it is, algebra reform (or scrapping and re-doing, as Lockhart would prefer) may well deserve priority*. It's the argument that the subject itself is any more or less valuable--in discrete skill form or otherwise--than any other school subject which I dispute.
*EDIT: In that way, I partially disagree with
Michael Hill. I, too, see a level of disingenuousness in focusing on algebra as "not necessary" while really arguing in large part that it's hard. These are two entirely different issues. However, if one were looking for a place to start productive reform, one might reasonably start with the subject of most difficulty to the most students. (I haven't perused the statistics in the Hacker article nor read contrary arguments, so I haven't yet judged if algebra is actually that subject.) I'd venture that this is Hacker's actual argument here--perhaps without knowing it.