ATTACK ON ALGEBRA
AND ITS
INVISIBLE CULTURAL BIAS
Count the large number of unhappy students who have (or who will) receive “D’s” and “F’s” in Algebra; count the large number of school dropouts–historical, contemporary, and future (those yet to be)–for whom the Algebra Monstrosity has become an impassable barrier; and then ask yourself if the philosophical doctrine “for the greater good” does not apply here?
Does not the Happiness Principle justify a concerted attack against Algebra as discriminatory and thus harmful to the social fabric of our nation!
Why I Hate Math (with good reason)
Primary audience: teachers, students who hate Algebra, professional educators, and the general public.
Secondary audience: disgruntled students, anti-social misfits, free-thinkers, angry rebels, outside-the-box reformers, and everybody else who ever wished they could have avoided suffering through so many long hours of Algebra (approximately 98.9% of the population)*
Part 1
How funny! I went on line to see if there were any websites or blogs about people who hate math . . . Here’s the reason why: I’ve never been very good at math. I was fine with arithmetic and ordinary “computational” math but when I got to Algebra in 8th grade my math world fell apart. That was at Westlake Junior High in Oakland . . . Talk about a crippling blow to one’s self-esteem! Once you’ve been run over by the Algebraic Equation Steam Roller you never fully recover your equilibrium. It’s an awful sensation!
In the years since I have earned several teaching credentials, a Masters Degree, and a Doctorate. Today, looking back after all this time, I still tremble and struggle with the question: am I stupid because I can’t understand Algebra or am I smart because I have a PhD? Yes, math-challenged though I was–and am–I still managed to enjoy a wonderful career as teacher and professor.
Today, I happen to know a young person who needs to pass a college Algebra class. Meaning to offer assistance, I immediately started brushing up to see if I could be of any assistance. “Brushing up” is actually a kind of sneaky euphemism as it implies I once knew a subject and therefore only needed to refresh a set of skills to become an expert again . . . when in fact I never really learned Algebra at all! A shocking admission to some, I suppose, but it is what it is—Algebra remains as alien to me as an incomprehensible foreign language . . .
It is disheartening for me to realize that, beyond a few pre-Algebra pretensions, I never moved beyond the inept novice stage. Ironically, I find that now, going online as a senior citizen, there are math websites that explain concepts better than what I first encountered in school. The immediate feedback of “right or wrong” after a problem-solving attempt is very helpful to people like me, struggling to wade ashore after being stuck in the muddy quagmire of the algebraic river of letters-and-numbers for so damn long.
Several websites even showed me the steps to finding the right solution so I could spot the slippery place where I first veered off the Holy Sanctified Process that leads to Algebraic Nirvana–i.e., “the right answer” although of course it still means nothing to me in terms of real world relevance.
It was a bit of a surprise that now, as an elder (“old person”), I was at least able to understand a few math notions I never could fathom as a teenager, which I suppose bodes well for the idea of “maturity” and how life’s experiences can help a person to grow and learn. Still, for me to get only a couple of steps beyond where I was as a teenager, hardly means anything in the bigger picture: the little extra baby step mastered now remains minuscule compared to all the mighty equation-solving skills students are ultimately supposed to master–not merely “learning” but “appreciating” and “applying” this branch of mathematics to some imaginary career farther down the road.
As a teenager, I had neither the ability nor aptitude for the beginnings of “higher math”: the various levels of Algebra, trigonometry, calculus, and the like. As I did not like such ridiculous numerical abstractions, I decided to resist all efforts to beat those subjects into my brain. It was a conscious willful choice, certainly, but one grounded in reason and a healthy respect for my own desires and emotional well-being.
I did not care to correct my abstract mathematical deficiencies through sheer determination and sweat, qualities of character that were better employed elsewhere. I rather doubt that I could have mustered the requisite intensity of mathematical obsession “to overcome” even had I been so inclined, which I wasn’t. Spare me the homilies about character and motivation: cogito ergo sum means I will decide, no one else!
From my point of view there were several extenuating circumstances: namely, I wasn’t the least bit interested in learning Algebra as a teenager in junior high. More germane to the story, perhaps, is the fact I also experienced a rather unfortunate clash of personalities with a one-dimensional Algebra teacher. This was right after my family had moved 2,600 miles across the country and the new school in a new state was totally out of sync with my previous beloved school, by magnitude immeasurable the far better of the two. Some of the “new school teaching” was awful!
Naturally, I am aware that the line between objective “relevant factors” and subjective “far-fetched rationalizations” is at times rather thin. I only wish to offer one simple idea: that a student’s attitude and degree of readiness affects a student’s chances of success in Algebra–much more so than most adults are willing to concede. I see no reason why teachers and schools should not become cognizant of this plain simple fact and plan accordingly.
An End to Pretend
In some ways I place myself on the horns of a dilemma even as I write this. As a mature adult (as mature as I’m ever likely to get) I can adopt “political correctness” with the best of the weak-kneed apologists for systems that are not working. Certainly I’m capable of preening my own feathers and penning something to the effect that “I now appreciate the importance of Algebra in life” . . . but there’s one little problem with that approach: I refuse to lie!
If I were a silver-tongued devil I would take the path of least resistance and willingly concede that whatever schools are doing now “is, always has been, and always will be” right, correct, appropriate, etc. The salaries of all principals, teachers, administrators, school board members, and publishers are well-justified given all their brilliant service in recent years, etc. etc. etc. under the category of Blah Blah Blah. Among this group, only the teachers are invariably underpaid but that is a separate topic best saved for another day.
Yes, I could embellish and exaggerate and pretend with the best of the apologists if I so chose–It’s just that I don’t like their message and I refuse to bend the knee.
After forty years in education, I feel qualified to address the issue of students who struggle mightily with mastering a subject. I feel empowered to discuss what teachers can and should do to engage students more actively; one of the keys to good teaching is knowing how to motivate students to learn.
Making students learn a subject they don’t like or need is not a recipe for success. The souffle will surely fall.
Sure, there are ostriches-among-educators who naively believe that the Algebra conundrum is not so grave—though you would think the large number of students in high school who can barely read, let alone solve complicated algebraic equations, would serve as some kind of wake-up call for them! WAKE UP PLEASE!!!
As a lifelong educator, I appreciate all such talk of “best practices” that inevitably accompany the latest wave of educational reforms aimed at making knowledge “accessible” and “relevant” to student lives: wonderful language, isn’t it? (destined for the scrapheap of platitudes but who cares?) The emphasis on “critical thinking skills” is long overdue—if only it were more successful and less a new form of bombastic verbiage.
I think we would all be very happy indeed to see some kind of qualitative leap forward in our schools, whatever the language of reform. Unfortunately, while the words often sound wonderful, the reality seldom matches those words.
And while I am tempted to pretend, I think it would not true to my deeper instincts. Some periodic reforms are practical and necessary, even admirable and wise, but here I speak of the deeper disease that never entirely ceases to plague the schools and re-infects them time and time again. Sure, it would be easy enough to go along with all the other shoddy conformist thinking out there already; by keeping quiet, I could sync up nicely with the “politically correct” line of thought—perhaps I should have said “educationally correct” for they amount to the same thing.
DILEMMA
My dilemma is this: for me to acquiesce to a system that is not delivering the much-heralded and promised results (after each new reform peters out), I would have to accept fiction for fact. Such blemished cowardice on my part wouldn’t be true to what I’m feeling and thinking and does not become a teacher.
So while it is somewhat true that the schools “care” and “try” to find the right reform methodologies year after year, they continue to miss the bigger picture. These efforts have been going on for years; the promise of the latest pedagogic adjustment eventually falls flat and fails to produce the desired results, and sometimes collapses completely under the weight of its own illogically misplaced emphasis.
The latest “reform” has its moment in the sun; it can even be a “star” for several years–until ti burns out and the search must start again. It is truly amazing how many cycles of hope-and-dashed-hope teachers have endured without waking up and “getting a clue” that there is a deeper systemic issue being missed.
I’d like to say each failure helps educators hone in and refine the next new pedagogic strategy; while true to a certain extent, it’s never “true enough”. There’s never a miraculous reform strategy just around the corner that produces the long-awaited “incredible” results everyone has been seeking year after year, decade after decade. Can you imagine? suddenly U.S. students are testing first in math, science, and reading when compared to kids all around the world!
Failed Reforms
Like falling leaves and other debris of the forest, the failed reforms of the past do make for a nice layer of rotting vegetation wherein the seeds of the next generation of pedagogic madness may incubate and sprout—and thus the cycle perpetuates itself forward from one era to the next.
Yet if you compare the math curriculum today with thirty or forty years ago, there is little real change. Even the discussion of pedagogic reform remains essentially the same. The educator’s descriptive language stating the problem–even amidst a sea of new data and charts–remains virtually unchanged.
No one seems to have the courage to point out that these unending series of reforms have not been producing the much cherished success everyone seeks. That’s why all these new reforms, one after another, are needed in the first place. The new teaching methodologies simply follow on the heels of the exhausted outgoing ones. These traditional (almost constipated) “wonder reforms” do not address the heart of the problem: no, not at all, not in the slightest!
Abolish Algebra!
I am not talking merely about reform but a revolutionary change in educational approach and societal values.
I am not immune to such talk as “Oh my god Algebra is sooo important” and “All we need to do is find a better way to teach it”. Yet when all is said and done, that’s still the same old game of words the schools have been palming off on an unsuspecting public for more years than I care to count. You see, a lot of teachers have learned how to stand hat in hand and say “yassah massa” (“yes sir master”) and the like. I’ve been there myself. We don’t challenge authority, we don’t rock the boat, we learn it’s safer to remain quiet than challenge the status quo head on.
Yet there’s definitely another part of me that says “Phooey!” on this whole way of thinking. While it is true that “better teaching” can lead to “better test scores”, it simply dodges the real issue. People have been hammering away at that old “let’s improve the schools-thru-better-teaching”” theme for so long now, it’s become a joke. If a reform is supposed to work, why is it necessary to keep trying one new reform after another to fix the last broken reform cycle?
Sure, I know the drill: let’s improve teacher preparation; let’s improve student discipline; let’s institute the wearing of student uniforms; let’s get the parents involved; let’s rearrange chairs-desks-and-students in groups; let’s do hands-on learning; let’s do project-based learning; let’s do critical thinking skills; let’s introduce pre-Algebraic concepts to ever younger grades; let’s make Algebra fun, easy, challenging, exciting . . . . and then what? Kindergarten kids will learn Algebra and graduate college having mastered every branch and level of the Very Highest Mathematics possible? I’m not sure that would be desirable even if were possible, which it certainly never was and never will be.
Teachers and parents get sucked into this game of “pretend” year after year, decade after decade, generation after generation. Your Momma and Poppa suffered through the Boredom of Algebra and probably your grandparents and even your great-grandparents did too! Has it been that long already?! A half-century goes by so fast when you’re being tortured, doesn’t it?
STOP!
Sometimes when a socio-educational problem is not being solved, it’s simply best to stop and take honest stock of where we truly are. STOP. There have been too many wasted years of unsuccessful “reforms”. STOP. Such thinking as “All students MUST learn Algebra” is in itself old-fashioned, pedantic, and unrealistic. STOP. The requirement to take Algebra is wrong. STOP. It is this requirement that must be abolished.
The traditional approach (“stick to the tried and true”) is not producing fresh ideas in response to the ever-present challenge “to think outside of the box”. Rather, this is a worn-out appeal to a dead set of ideas that are sealed and suffocating to death inside said box: they represent a decaying, decrepit, and obsolete approach to education.
They never worked that well in the first place, did they? The curriculum itself is fatally flawed. Constantly trying to repair all the reformers’ numerous errors in conception and design ultimately prove fruitless no matter how many rounds of nonsense are played.
It is high past time to revolt and overthrow all these outdated approaches with a coup de grace and wave them goodbye for good. Simply say with me: NO MORE ALGEBRA!!!
No, I am not going to defend the importance of Algebra to American society nor am I going to engage in wishful thinking about how we educators should keep searching for a way to make Algebra palatable for students: to all that I say “You’re crazy!”
Instead of cowardly joining the denizens of the deep that make up the Algebra Math Heads, I choose a different path of enlightened self-fulfillment: I hope to explain “Why I Hate Math” in such a manner as to maintain a strong bond of brotherhood with suffering students everywhere.
Students of all school districts, unite! You have nothing to lose but your equations!!
Defend It No More
As alluded to earlier, I went on line to see what there was on the Web written by other people who said they hated math. I mentioned that it was a “funny experience” because of what I found next: while here and there I found a few persons who truly detested Algebra, the general tone zoomed off in an entirely unexpected direction.
These writers dutifully described the difficulties they themselves faced when they first encountered Algebra but nearly all did so with the intention of ultimately justifying the necessity of Algebra, the beauty of Algebra, the fun of Algebra! They pirouetted into an about-face that was as truly baffling as it was mind-numbing illogical. The fools who once knew they hated Algebra eagerly went on line to brag about their weakness-of-character conversion!
“What a friggin’ betrayal!” I thought to myself. They masquerade as individuals who “understand” why students hate Algebra but all they really want to do is parade around in their multi-colored feathers of puffed-up vanity in order to brag. They want others to know about how good they became at Math and how they now recognize its value and other Jabberwocky nonsense!
What a ridiculous subset of human beings to being blowing smoke on the Internet! Let them migrate to a website for Algebra lovers like themselves and cease pretending they know why students fear and detest Algebra.
Now a few of them, it’s only fair to say, did recognize that certain issues and obstacles keep on occurring with the teaching of Algebra. Several even admitted that Algebra was boring and sleep-inducing while a couple referred to it as challenging and difficult.
Among them was a sprinkling of bright lights who dared question whether 8th grade was the right age at which to be teaching such an advanced subject in the first place (a novel thought, but I accept allies wherever they may exist).
You see, some of them thought 8th grade was too young for teenagers due to the highly abstract nature of this branch of mathematics; this was interesting as it ran in opposition to another slow-moving current of educational reform which believes in introducing bits and pieces of algebraic equations to younger and younger children.
The premise, presumably, consists of the notion that this will help prepare these kids “for the real thing” when they finally get to their first real Algebra class. You probably know the class I mean (if the trauma has not blocked it from memory), the class where so many students get the first “C”, “D”, or “F” of their lives (for bright students in other subjects, even a “C” in Algebra hurts!)
As I continued to surf the Web, there was some occasional food for thought in these various email strings, blogs, and website commentaries but nearly all conceded—consciously or otherwise—that Algebra is here to stay. Inasmuch as they, and everyone else, were powerless to stop the Algebra Monster, they seemed to imply it was best to accept our sad fate and adapt to this world not of our own making.
However difficult the rigors of learning (and teaching) said subject, the only solution they could offer is to look for better approaches to instruction: the same crazy road educators have stumbled down 1,000 times before!
If there really were a better way to teach Algebra, don’t you think thousands of teachers hunting for that magic method would have discovered it by now?!
With these website hit-and-run commentators, it’s hard to even know if that’s really them talking (their real inner being feelings) or if they’ve simply been brainwashed into becoming sellout artists.
Either way, they seem to be doing an adept job of betraying rather than rescuing the next generation that must follow them down another hallway of mathematical aches and pains. A few honestly sought additional justification when they opined: I suffered through this crap, why shouldn’t you?!
The End of Algebra
I favor a different approach: I recommend discontinuing Algebra as a required class! It is time to replace it with a much broader selection of electives that could range from computer technology to the various sciences–such as anatomy, astronomy, biology, forensics, and a dozen more.
In real life tremendous progress is being made in field after field where careers are available and where worthwhile and rewarding work would result: not suffering the same damn terms and and same damn formulas generation after generation of unwilling several Americans had to memorize.
It is time to replace Algebra with electives that students need and like because of their greater intrinsic attraction and their greater relevance to the students’ present and future lives. Students would become twice motivated and twice as likely to succeed . . . as students invariably do when they finally discover it’s okay to enjoy a subject that is meaningful and challenging!
However, I anticipate myself, or my solution at any rate, so let me return to my theme and explain why I hate math before discussing solutions. Hopefully by now the reader understands that by “solutions” I mean a new approach that does not depend on rehashing the same old tired ideas: tweaking the textbooks, manipulating the seating arrangement (moving desks closer together or farther apart), varying instructional strategies, modifying the quantity or quality of homework, introducing new “fun” games: all swirling around the 800 pound gorilla in the room we call ALGEBRA!
A Revolt By Any Other Name
As our Founding Fathers once took the time and care to itemize a specific list of 18 grievances against the despot King George III, I would like to do the same now with regard to the Despot Algebra. Instead of websites that fake-criticize Algebra, how would it be if such a search “Why I Hate Algebra” brought up websites that expressed truly substantial and revolutionary responses instead? I hate math because . . .
-
It’s hard!
-
It’s boring!
-
It’s unnecessary!
-
It’s of no practical use! (for most people)
-
It’s biased! (culturally, ethnically, linguistically, and along the fault lines of social class)
-
It’s irrelevant to students’ real-time existence and to most people’s daily lives!
-
It’s pegged to be assessed via test results for purposes of district funding!
-
It’s degrading, insulting, dehumanizing, and pettifogging!
-
It creates feelings of self-doubt, inferiority, and insecurity! (potentially very damaging for students just entering their self-conscious teen years)
-
Otherwise once promising friendships may suffer! (the “smart kid/dumb kid divide” enters the picture and creates a two-tier social status on campus)
-
It destroys self-confidence, ambition, and eagerness to learn! (damaging to the fragile psyche of young teens)
-
It’s part of the industrial-military complex that savagely exploits people and resources around the world! This point will probably prove too far-fetched and “outside the box” for most math-heads so they have permission to skip it. Social criticism that focuses on the role of higher mathematics in engineering and the construction of terrible weapons of mass destruction—hey, only a Pacifist, a Quaker, or a Commie would even think to offer such a bizarre comment!
-
Algebra is given godlike status with no consideration for the ability of students or for their natural inclinations as to what they would prefer learning! Students have little or no say in this self-proclaimed democratic-minded society whereas their voices really should be heard.
-
Studying algebraic equations utterly fails to promote higher levels of literary, philosophical, and self-discovery journeys of exploration among students!
-
Algebra is so narrowly conceived that it actually becomes anti-intellectual by preventing a broader knowledge and understanding of the reality of the seven-continent world around students!
-
Excessively difficult algebraic rules stunt the overall academic success rate of many students!
-
Algebra’s main effect is to screw up the fair-minded psychological development of students as multi-dimensional human beings. It tempts them to turn to drugs to get their kicks!
-
Algebra has become an ethnic and cultural gate-keeper and destroyer of dreams and hopes!
-
It has widened and reinforced cultural gaps along racial, ethnic, and class lines!
-
It has turned off millions of students to school and learning!
-
It has contributed to the heartache and bitter disappointment of countless students when they experience the worst grades they ever received (their first failing marks for all too many), leaving them wobbly and unsure about themselves and school!
-
It leaves students open to perfidious and insidious influences that may push them onto wayward paths and trap them into anti-social behavior that they would never have otherwise contemplated!
-
Algebra helps push students into gangs!
-
It has contributed to thousands of students turning at-risk behavior into such poor choices as dropping out of school, starting alcohol and drug use, joining gangs, and committing crimes (the average reading level of our prisoner population just happens to be 8th grade: one can well imagine what their math skill levels are!)
-
Algebra teaches obedience, not independence! (and is thus highly un-American)
-
Algebra makes the student masses miserable when only a few specialists-in-math are needed to go through this level of suffering before succeeding in careers in those few select industries that truly need such mathematical mastery: technology and the military (with the latter’s insatiable appetite to build and destroy while related defense industries can continue to make huge profits on lucrative contracts).
Social Inequality
These are my 26 points, as the Founding Fathers once enumerated 18 grievances against Mad King George.
[A note here as to my counting method: one of our Founding Fathers’ 18 points is sub-sectioned into eight additional points so there are actually 26 specific grievances in all. My expertise is American History, not the science of numbers. I guess that’s a math-historical note, eh?!]
Knowing how to successfully navigate the mazes of Algebra, followed by higher mathematics, has become the privileged Country Club of a small number of empowered students within K-12 Academia, some of whom will go on to specialize in high-paying careers that require these advanced math skills . . . while millions of other students will go on to regular types of non-mathematical employment: that is to say, far less extraordinary jobs that require no such advanced abilities.
There are thousands of kinds of jobs that are challenging, necessary, and productive and yet do not require Algebra! Indeed, the overwhelming majority of jobs do not require advanced math skills.
Well-endowed private schools will continue to pump out the next generation of lawyers, judges, CEO’s, business leaders, and politically ambitious leaders who succeeded in (or at least passed) Algebra. Wealthy families can afford to hire well-paid academic coaches to do the taxing work for their progeny. The game is rigged here, too.
WHO USES MATH?
Reality check: what percentage of the American work force actually uses Algebra, Trigonometry, and Calculus on any kind of a regular basis? Think of that as a math “percentage problem”!
One website estimated that among people using math in their jobs, 87% need nothing more than basic math skills! And this is to say nothing of those who work at jobs that require little or no math skills whatsoever! Even for defenders of Algebra-and-up, there is another complaint to consider:
Most schools do not let talented hard-working students–with an increasingly visible aptitude for Mathematics–go forward at their own pace. Not only haven’t schools successfully figured out a way to teach struggling students, they haven’t figured out a way to stop sandbagging those students who actually enjoy and excel at higher math classes!
To the contrary, most schools have devised a system whereby they retard the development of those students willing and able to master Algebra and beyond! They are a numerical minority, to be sure, but they do exist–and they also should be thought of as having rights!
Schools have always had trouble coming to grips with student maturity-and-performance plotted against a student’s chronological age. Paradoxically, this unresolved dilemma often means both the high end and the low end of the class suffer from lack of engaging and challenging work at which they can be successful.
Odd but true: both the “good student” and the “puzzled student” (to be kind!) often suffer equally from benign neglect–and of course nearly all the students in the middle suffer as well when neither the upper nor lower-achieving students are happy or well-managed.
The upper tier gets frustrated, snotty, and snobbish while the lower tier gets mean and rebellious: the first group develops habits of condescension and masked superiority while the second group rebels.
The unsuccessful (and failing) group of students can quickly develop habits of inferiority and disrespectful sullen non-cooperation, if not outright violent antipathies.
Algebra thus ruins classroom unity as well as school and civic pride. It divides and isolates and alienates students, including those with long-standing friendships which are suddenly placed in jeopardy. One friend goes to the classroom for smart kids, the other to the classroom for dummies.
Many schools still do not let students use calculators or computers to navigate safely through the mine fields of these mind-numbing equations, as though allowing students (high, middle, or low) to avail themselves of technology to get the right answer ought be a crime punishable as a felony.
THE TECHNOLOGY IS HERE!
AND YET THE TEACHERS REFUSE TO LET THE STUDENTS
MAKE MAXIMUM USE OF TECHNOLOGY
TO EASE THE BOREDOM AND BURDEN IMPOSED ON THEM
BY HAVING TO SOLVE OVER AND OVER AGAIN
MULTIPLE-STEP ALGEBRAIC PROBLEMS REQUIRING
AN UNWELCOME AND AGONIZING
DESCENT INTO MENTAL HELL!
Solution: Electives and Technology
Why allow students to buy prepared loaves of bread in the grocery store—why not insist instead they bake every loaf from scratch? Why let them (or their families) drive cars when they could walk or ride bicycles or mount a horse? Wasn’t that good enough for earlier generations of American families?
Name one other area of American life where a technology exists that can simplify and improve the quality of life that is not allowed to be used to its fullest extent in today’s society!
Only Algebraic students are not allowed to use Technology that could help them navigate the treacherous waters of Algebra . . . but my intent here is not to introduce ways to make Algebra palatable. I would merely point out if the computer can solve mathematical problems for us, why not use the technology that exists?
My intent, rather, is to argue for Algebra’s elimination as a required class from the school curriculum entirely, by transforming it into an elective instead–paralleled by a suitable range of new alternative classes in technology, the sciences, industrial arts, the arts, and what have you.
I am not here to argue how educators can and should improve the teaching of Algebra, though that certainly will remain an important issue for instructing those students who choose it as an elective.
I am here to argue that it is time to cast Algebra off entirely, as the schools once dismissed the need for instruction in Latin. It is high past time to pull Algebra down off its pedestal and smash the smug godlike statue to smithereens.
It is time to stop seeing Algebra as an “untouchable” that every child in America must endure sooner or later. It is time for a real change that can lead to something far more exciting and productive in the schools than can ever be achieved by merely tweaking the Algebraic Dance.
Stop the personal pain and cultural discrimination caused by Algebra and replace it with humane, engaging, and meaningful electives of the highest order. End the torture and commit to liberating the minds of students everywhere!
DEAD HAND OF THE PAST VS. A BRIGHT FUTURE
Sadly, the predictable inability of 99% of all educators to entertain such a thought is yet another reason—perhaps the last and most damning one of all—that helps explain best Why I Hate Math.
When all teachers are trained by rote to defend Algebra as a preordained prerequisite delivered from on high, then the teaching of Algebra stifles creativity and genuine academic exploration!
We expect students to memorize formulas that have been around, unchanged, for ages. The answers have long been known by mathematicians (and book publishers) but education has not kept up with how the world has changed.
Today, tools exist to find solutions. Today’s students are capable of searching for new knowledge and skills that go far beyond traditional mathematical instructional strategies and limits. Students today are quite capable of brilliantly exceeding the prosaic mental skills involved in the solving of a single Algebraic equation.
They are capable of making cutting-edge contributions to the world. A few middle school and high school students have already conducted science experiments that have earned them recognition in the world of real science; some have won awards and some have been recruited by colleges offering full scholarships!
Why does the teaching of Algebra lag so far behind the creativity of Science? Algebra is devoted to rote memorization of operational sequencing which does not call for nor encourage original and independent thought.
A persistent student can get the right answer without understanding why or how it applies to a real life situation. That is working like an automaton.
They are capable of tackling far greater challenges with only the help of a laptop!
The blind unwavering commitment to this one subject prevents teachers from exploring new avenues of knowledge and philosophy that know no limits, with only the unbounded blue sky above during the day–and the multitudinous celestial heavens of stars-by-the-billions above us during the night–to inspire and guide us.
Let the students choose new subjects of equal worth and challenge!
Watch what happens when a scholastic garden is given the nourishment it needs to bloom and come alive!!
* “approximately 98.9% of the population” (That’s a linguistic-mathematical form of humor!)
