Andrew Hacker has made a career out of being contrary. He has done some very important work in his actual field, political science, including the 1992 book Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, and Unequal. Unfortunately, he’s also one of those guys who thinks because he’s good at one thing, he’s good at everything.
Hence, Hacker, who is neither a teacher nor a mathematics professor, ran an editorial about how we, like, totally don’t need algebra, you guys.
The problem is that Hacker isn’t precisely wrong but takes his logic too far. He is right that mathematics education in this country needs an enormous overhaul. Hacker is right when he points out that the math we learn in high schools has nothing to do with the practical math that we’ll need to do at most jobs.
But at the same time, he exaggerates how difficult algebra actually is. The problem is not the content: It’s how the content is taught.
The underpining of mathematics, especially algebra, is logic. There is nothing more crucial in modern society than being able to study a system, learn its rules, learn how to apply those rules, and to understand what happens to a system when those rules change.
It’s what our entire modern system is built on, when you think about it. To study algebra is to study systems in their purest forms. Algebra is ultimately part of the study of systems and patterns, things that we need to be able to spot at work and in life. At the very least we need to know how to use tools to find these things.
If Hacker’s argument was that algebra needs to be taught differently, I’d agree with him completely. Currently the way we teach algebra is a mess. But all Hacker is doing here is issuing a cry for attention.
image courtesy Wikimedia Commons