So, of course, Andrew Hacker’s article “Is Algebra Necessary?” had caused quite the stir, and the obvious answer to that question was “Yes, algebra is necessary.” But the article makes you think if all of what we learn of algebra is necessary. And I think it isn’t, but that comes from thinking about what high school is for.
Do we expect that, when a student gets to college, they can skip the lower levels of Biology because they took bio in high school? No, of course not. (Excepting AP courses, of course.) So what is our goal for learning biology in high school? It’s to provide a general foundation of the subject, that most people should know, and it prepares you for a college level course or major in Biology.
Really, all of what we learn in high school is designed to broaden our horizons, to provide experiences and content we wouldn’t see otherwise, and to provide a baseline of knowledge that we feel everyone should have.
I remember reading from someone, though I don’t recall who, that they had struggled through Algebra 2 and Pre-Calculus, slogging along, and then when they got to Calculus a light turned on. “This was why we’ve been learning everything we’ve done in the past two years! It was all for this!” Even the wikipedia page on Pre-Calc says “…precalculus does not involve calculus, but explores topics that will be applied in calculus.” It’s putting the work before the motivating problem, again.
But now thinking about the normal course sequence for a student that is not advanced: Algebra –> Geometry –> Algebra 2 –> Pre-Calculus –> Graduated from High School, so no Calc! So these students will have two whole years of math without the payoff that shows why we do it.
And as teachers we know that you need to start with the motivating factor, not have it at the end. So why don’t we have calculus first, before those two? If we consider our goal in high school is to spread ideas people might not see otherwise, I think Calculus has a lot of important ideas people should see that would improve their lives. Optimization? The very idea of it can improve how you look at all the problems in your life. Related rates, limits, the idea of changing rates and local rates, the relationships between functions, these are all good ideas to be familiar with.
Can the students learn these things without having done Algebra 2/Pre-Calc? I think so. As Bowman Dickson says, “The hardest part of calculus is algebra.” So what if we taught it in a way that didn’t rely on that? We can get the ideas across without jumping into the nitty-gritty of a lot of it. Save that for AP level classes, or for college calc. What you take in college is more in depth that high school, so it should be the same here.
Now, there would certainly be some stuff from Algebra 2/Pre-Calc that we really need first. But why not have those in Algebra 1? I accidentally taught several things from Alg 2 when I taught Alg 1 my first year, because they seemed like natural extensions of what we were doing, and I didn’t know they weren’t required until I started planning for the next year. But also, consider this. If we made Probability & Statistics one of the main courses of the math sequence, I don’t have to teach it in Algebra 1. I spent about 7 weeks on those topics last year. That’s 7 weeks of Alg 2 content I could fold in, without worrying about reviewing old stuff because we just did it.
So then the new math sequence could be Statistics –> Geometry –> Algebra –> Calculus. (And I think that might fit well with the science sequence of Biology –> Earth Science –> Chemistry –> Physics.)
Thoughts?
James Cleveland-Tran
The Roots of the Equation 
Comments on: "Is Algebra 2 Necessary?" (6)
I think this would be cool, seeing as pre-calc frustrated me to the point where I didn’t take calc in HS, even though I could have.
I confess that Precalculus was sufficiently long ago, and a small enough part of my high school curriculum [*] that I don’t remember what it was. What does make up the class? And, well, what would be the part of Calculus whose payoff is worth it to get into high school?
[*] I had been in a quite accelerated magnet program for math and science and engineering, with Algebra I taken as a summer course before high school began, and with Trigonometry and Precalculus were squeezed into one year. The upside is we got two years of Calculus (!), although I distinctly remember having no idea what any of this magic talk was with sequences and series.
As far as I can tell, it’s looking at lots of different functions and their graphs (logarithmic, exponential, rational, trig, etc), some other topics that might be of use (matrices, vectors, polar coordinates) and maybe an intro to limits. As a real indicator, it is often called Algebra 3. But why have 3 years of algebra, and no years of calculus or statistics? That just doesn’t make sense to me.
I am a parent of an 11th grader, she has to take Algebra, Geometry, Algebra II in order to get credits required to graduate. She is an average student, (at best), and an obedient child who works really hard to make decent grades, which she manges to do in everything but math. She has been behind in math since elementary, and despite the thousands of dollars we have spent on tutoring, despite all the testing and evaluations we have had done, she still tests out at a 7-8 th grade level in comprehension. In short, the light bulb has not lit up, and at this point I hope you can understand why I believe it will not before she leaves high school. (And I can hear you now-“Well with that negative attitude no wonder she has problems!” and if that is your thought, you couldn’t be more wrong). The math monster has made her life (and ours) incredibly difficult, and it is ludicrous to think that every child can master these classes. And it may very well keep her from going to college.
I really thought math and science were fun until pre-calculus. Straight A’s in Algebra and Algebra II, but then mediocre scores in Geometry followed by very awful scores in pre-calc. I’m not sure if it was the memorization of theorems or the spatial, geometric pieces that threw me off, but it was enough to make me switch gears in college and not pursue the path I’d originally dreamed of.
[…] post was well received and heavily commented upon. In fact, four other Math for America teachers (James Cleveland, Amy Hogan, Patrick Honner, and Jose Vilson) have blogged about Andrew Hacker as well – each […]