Don't read articles about your old high school

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The subject is good advice.

Apparently, my old high school (a regional magnet) has about 20% applicants who are African-American. But only 7% of the student body is African-American. Some people have a problem with this, so a group at the University of Virginia did a study on the issue. They had several recommendations---some good, some I take

Comments

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You have made an eloquent argument for education in mathematics...which is a terrible argument for requiring an algebra course.

I assert that the current structure of mathematics education, from pre-algebra through elementary calculus, is actually the very reason that the capability for simple mathematical reasoning is seemingly so rare. Mathematics is taught as an increasingly complex tower of symbol manipulations, arcane art on top of arcane art; surviving Algebra has nothing to do with developing intuition and everything to do with copy-paste book learning and memorizing rote technique and having a high tolerance for bullshit.

Put this number in this box in this table. First-Inside-Outside-Last. Connect the dots. Read an algebra textbook: it's usually written like an instruction manual, and no surprise, it's usually taught that way too.

Algebra is presented as frustrating or intimidating or both, and the lesson that anyone who doesn't "get it" takes away from that is: math is for smart brainy people, I shouldn't even bother. And they don't. They throw up their hands at the simplest mathematical task because they have been _specifically taught to believe_ that math is too hard for them.

I would rather see algebra and trig and precalculus be completely removed from middle and high school standard curricula than have them continue to be mandatory in their current state.