Is Algebra Necessary (in US schools)?

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I don't know quite how to take this: Is Algebra an unnecessary stumbling-block for American students?

Arguments Against (Algebra):
*  many kids don't do well in 9th grade algebra.
*  bad for self-esteem.
*  not needed by the vast majority —almost 95%— of students.
*  The way the curriculum is structured, if a kid hits a block at algebra, he/she can't move forward.

Arguments For (Algebra):
This is harder.

Many scientific professions are based on higher-level mathematics.  These are the very professions that we are interested in not outsourcing to Asians and Europeans.  Programming, technological jobs, jobs designing advanced devices: these require the ability to quickly solve problems using algebra; Algebra is therefore a gateway to many jobs.  But it is clear that not every student is mentally equipped to deal with algebra, and still fewer are psychologically equipped for it (and even fewer still have parents who can negotiate the psychological quagmire created by the complex combination of teachers, kids, and their sly friends, and their sly parents).  Many self-made people are interested only in diplomas, and not in education.  They know that they can hire foreign, math-capable workers for practically peanuts to do the really messy mathematical spadework.  The last thing they want is for Junior to be hired for peanuts to do messy spadework.  They want Junior to get a management-level position doing little work for a lot of pay.  That means math not required!

Many courses and subjects that kids are taught have indirect benefits.  Music, History, Philosophy, these all have benefits that go far beyond knowing notes, dates, and famous Greek philosophers.  Algebra is also like this.  It is something that teaches patterns, abstract reasoning, complex relationships.  You can go only so far learning the difference between profit and loss.  Today's investment geniuses and white collar criminals know an enormous amount of higher mathematics.  If you aspirations for junior are either of those, stick with the math.

All the time, the number of entry-level jobs that require programming, or coding, or using formulas is gradually increasing.  Even if your child is destined for administrative greatness, it is invaluable to know enough mathematics (and programming, incidentally,) to be able to spot when an employee is making an error repeatedly.  The difference between seeing a discrepancy right away, and seeing it 3 years later could be measured in thousands, even millions of dollars.  Even such a simple thing as deciding how much capacity a company Internet line needs to carry can be easily solved using Algebra, or solved using a lot more effort using a Spreadsheet.

Of course, there is the primitive argument that foreign kids know more Algebra than US kids, so we have to step up our game.  This is a sort of Little League approach to education.

This is a silly argument.  We don't need to dive for oysters, even though foreign kids somewhere are sure to be better at it than we are.  Every country need not send a baseball team to the Olympics just because those crazy Yanks are going to do it.  Of course Americans are insanely competitive, so they try to beat every nation at everything.  I personally don't think that makes a lot of sense.  But it may be economically feasible to teach all kids a little Algebra, just to make sure that the kids who really need it get the basics in time to follow up with more math.  It may also be worth it to identify the mathematically talented kids early, so that they can be tracked, and encouraged to take enough mathematics for those more technologically sophisticated jobs (on the off-chance that they may pay a lot better in the future).

It's a no-win problem for parents whose kids are strong-minded, and who push back.  Mathematical handicaps should not hold kids back from everything.  For instance, the insistence of medical schools that their applicants have a lot of mathematics (e.g. Calculus) on their transcripts is, I think, a sneaky way of eliminating kids who are likely to whine in medical school.  If you can subject to the discipline of learning calculus, you're probably not going to be a pain in the ass as a first-year medical student.  People who are enthusiastic about teaching every kid all the possible mathematics, ready or not, are a problem.  But where I teach, I find that even kids who have declared a mathematics major are uninterested in actually learning too much mathematics.

In some ways, the US is becoming decadent.  We can't have everything.  We've got to take the rough with the smooth, and for some people, Algebra is probably part of the rough.

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