
Is algebra an unnecessary stumbling block in US schools? - Jerry2
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/f7b0c544f83743509960e1a665000751/algebra-unnecessary-stumbling-block-us-schools
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PhantomGremlin
It'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-
requirement...](http://oregonstate.edu/admissions/main/admission-
requirements-1) [2] when I was helping my daughter with Algebra II, Wolfram
Alpha made it _very_ easy to check our work.

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cafard
I 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.

