Aaron posted a link to an article lamenting the LA BoE's requirement that all students pass algebra to graduate.

Far be it for me to defend the utility of algebra classes; everyone here knows how I feel about that. Nor am I really happy about any statement that says, "all students must learn X," since it usually translates to "all students must sit through a lot of talk on X, and spit back the appropriate answers on tests" and any actual learning is incidental. But this Richard Cohen guy's talking through his hat; he's using his employment as a writer to justify his ineptitude at math. "Because X is useful, Y must be useless."

(Before anyone gets on my case, how do you get through life without being able to calculate percentages? Sale! 30% off! This IS useful.) (And if he really needed a class to learn how to type...well, that's one wasted semester, is all I can say. Typing is useful--a semester of "how to type" is trolling for an easy A.)

This article in the LA Times gives a much more balanced view of the situation. It developed in part because the school adopted "tougher graduation requirements" without devoting effective resources to preparing students to meet those requirements. This isn't about math, except maybe the kind with dollars and no sense.

But if one feels for the hapless students forced to sit through hours of polynomial hell, it's also pretty hard not to feel for teachers like George Seidel, who "once brokered multimillion-dollar business deals but left a 25-year law career, hoping to find a more fulfilling job." Poor sucker, here's what he gets to deal with every day:

Only seven of 39 students brought their textbooks. Several had no paper or pencils. One sat for the entire period with his backpack on his shoulders, tapping his desk with a finger. Another doodled an eagle in red ink in his notebook. Others gossiped as Seidel, a second-year teacher, jotted problems on the front board.

Oh, and Gabriela Ocampo? "Gabriela didn't give Seidel much of a chance; she skipped 62 of 93 days that semester." At press time last January, she was working at Subway for $7 an hour.

Could passing algebra have changed Gabriela's future? Most educators would say yes. Algebra, they insist, can mean the difference between menial work and high-level careers.

No, no, no, people, how wrong can you be? Graduating high school means that difference. The algebra is incidental. Going to college means an even greater difference--where algegbra is, for some mystifying reason, required even for humanities majors.

A better question is, how much of Gabriela's repeated failures (6 times??) and subsequent dropping out was caused by stricter graduation requirements without real resources, and how much was caused by her own apathy? Even better: how much of her apathy was caused by that same lack of resources? "The strategy has also failed to provide students with what they need most: a review of basic math." Trying to teach alebra to a kid who never mastered long division is like trying to teach an illiterate to read Shakespeare (which may explain why so many students do so badly at literature, but I digress).

But now we come to the crux of it. What's it all about, then, really, when you get right down to it? What is algebra, really, for?

"If you want to work in the real world, if you want to wire buildings and plumb buildings, that's when it requires algebra," said Don Davis, executive director of the Electrical Training Institute, which runs apprenticeship programs for union electricians in Los Angeles...Analytical skills and formulas enable people to make sense of the world. Algebra can help a worker calculate income taxes, a baseball fan determine a pitcher's earned-run average and a driver determine a car's gas mileage.

Excellent! Wonderful! The real world! Teach me this stuff, it sounds great! Except that's not how we get taught algebra, is it? No, indeed, we get bogged down in a hopeless muddle of Xs and Ys and square roots. The real world can hardly compete with such a morass of abstraction.

Ironically:

Until recently, high schools offered a range of programs. Students seen as academically able were placed in college-prep classes. Others were funneled into vocational courses in which they learned such skills as auto mechanics and office technology.

Or maybe plumbing? So you mean to say, the old system meant that students considered "destined" for careers where algebra might have actually been useful were being steered away from it? Saints preserve us.

State Sen. Chuck Poochigian, apparently in an effort to deflect attention from his silly name, is responsible for the algebra graduation law, and it must be admitted that Senetor Pooch has a point: "We have a problem with a high dropout rate. You don't address it by making it easier to get through and have the meaning of the diploma diluted." True, but you also don't address it by tossing students and teachers alike to the sharks. Wake up and smell the blood trail, Chuck.

Another endless cause and effect loop rears its head when the article brings up the subject of the math teacher shortage:

The Center for the Future of Teaching & Learning in Santa Cruz found that more than 40% of eighth-grade algebra teachers in California lack a math credential or are teaching outside their field of expertise; more than 20% of high school math teachers are similarly unprepared...At Cal State Northridge, 35% of future elementary school instructors earned Ds or Fs in their first college-level math class last year.

Are there not enough math teachers because no one learns math well enough to teach it? Or does no one learn math well because there aren't enough teachers?

Chicken, egg, chicken, egg, round and round and round, and who gets caught in the middle? George Seidel, Gabriela Ocampo, typing giant Richard Cohen, and me.