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I am taken aback by this.
Let's stop teaching everything. What else are we going to add to the list?
I'm with you!
Algebra is little more than a basic math skill. It should be taught before any of those personal finance, banking, etc classes (which, I also think will benefit most kids). Solving for "X" is not hard. But learning how opens doors to figuring out more complex problems. It's not just about the math, it's about the thinking skills required to live.
This is more about effort than anything else, this is the reason we trail other countries in math and English and should not be accepted as a solution. We already have a large quantity of unqualified graduates entering college, should we add to that amount.
While becoming a Mathematician is a great career, few will choose it.
Kids need to learn more about these boxes that run our entire lives. Coding and more coding...... Learning how to use computer programs out there without much hesitation.
While people who are good at math are generally good at programing formulas, you don't have to have a lot of traditional math first to get use to it. Better off teaching what they will really need, the other is a waste of time. IMO, of course.
Our educational system would do well to learn from other countries with more efficient means to help kids decide early on what they will pursue. Our well rounded approach well up into the first few years of college isn't efficient. That way kids who needed higher math could have it but those who don't wouldn't have to waste their time or deal with the frustration.
We need more trade schools as well. It seems everyone here naturally feeds their kids into the university machine. Waste of money and time. Why we guilt every parent into wanting the smartest most successful child I'll never know. It's like wanting every kid to land that Madonna job, it will just make them feel like failures. Not a good quality of life. Not realistic. Not working either.
Simple multiplication and division are too hard for some people, should we put them in the 'too difficult' scrap heap too?
Nope. They should be guided to a good trade school and shown that electricians and plumbers make more than most college grads. There is a job for everyone. The most important thing is that they learn how to be self sufficient and find pride in that.
The literacy rates among fourth grade students in America are sobering. Sixty six percent of all U.S. fourth graders scored "below proficient" on the 2013 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) reading test, meaning that they are not reading at grade level.1
Even more alarming is the fact that among students from low-income backgrounds, 80 percent score below grade level in reading.2
Reading proficiency among middle school students isn't much better. On the 2013 NAEP reading test, about 22 percent of eighth graders scored below the "basic" level, and only 36 percent of eighth graders were at or above grade level.3
Compared to other countries, we fail in math and science.
The USA averages 27th from the top in Math...that is not only sobering, but pathetic....our society is corroding...intellectually, which doesn't surprise me, hearing people talk about their political affiliations.
If we are going down hill in these areas, then we are also declining in other skills....
1. Common sense
2. awareness
3. the ability to allow others
4. the ability to problem solve
our entire society, is declining rapidly, we should be so much more further along....
The U.S. spends significantly more on education than other OECD countries.
Yet, more money spent doesn’t translate to better educational outcomes. In fact, American education is loaded with problems, starting with the gaping differences between white students and students of color:
More than 60 years after Brown vs. Board of Education, school systems in the United States are still separate and unequal.
By 2022, the number of Hispanic students in public elementary and secondary schools is projected to grow 33 percent from the 2011 numbers. The number of multi-racial students is expected to grow 44 percent.
As the percentage of white students if our education shrinks and the percentage of students of color grow, the U.S. will be left with an education system that doesn't serve the majority of its children properly; the gaps in education will prove especially problematic and in my opinion already has....
I agree, it makes little sense to require a subject that is simply too hard for some people. Those kids are much better off staying in school and learning math they are likely to use as adults.
... for students with average or better intelligence. But for a kid with an 85 IQ, which is likely typical in urban public schools, algebra may as well be string theory.
I think the problem is that we have completely useless teachers that believe in the myth of static IQ.
Their logic is that if kids don't understand something that they're teaching poorly, it's because the kids are stupid.
Why teach anything, just drop it.
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Coding and more coding...... Learning how to use computer programs out there without much hesitation. 