Why algebra?

A high school student asked me why they had to take algebra. They were planning to into the arts and didn't see any need for algebra.

This has come up before and in point of fact I think making algebra a universal requirement is stupid. Yes, I said it. Stupid.

I suppose requiring algebra of everyone in high school is some residue of the 'new math' insanity.

I know a guy who started working on cars when he was twelve. His brother got an engine from a junk yard and he spent the summer taking it apart and putting it back together. In the summer of his 13th year his brother got him another junk yard engine and by the end of the summer it was sitting in the front yard running.

The mathematics he needed after HS was knowledge of angles involved in crank shafts and cam shafts, the mathematics of displacements and piston ring gaps; no algebra. But his HS required algebra and so I had to teach him about angles and displacements in his thirties. He never saw an 'x' after HS.

If you are in science or mathematics algbra is used all the time although the only time I have personally used HS algebra was in altering the bourbon-vermouth proportions of four galleons of manhattans.

And it isn't that an English major couldn't use some mathematics but that mathematics is not algebra.

Mathematics is said to enhance thinking skills and I believe that. But a HS algebra course, or a university algebra course for that matter, may help memory skills but not thinking skills.

I know of a HS that gave up on algebra word problems and stopped teaching them. Any possible value of algebra was taken out. But algebra was still required.

A kid that lived next door to me took all the mathematics courses in HS, including calculus, and tested into algbra when he entered university. He aced the university algbra because it was pretty much the same as the HS algebra that he had aced.

There is the concept of "core courses" that all students are required to take and of course mathematics gets a share of the pie. Since all students are supposed to take a core course there are a lot of huge sections, hence more teachers, hence more positions to fill.

I think the "core course" is a stupid idea. Yes, I said it. Stupid.
To make algebra a "core course" is stupid supersized.

If mathematics understanding isn't taught, why teach it at all? If memoriztion is the object, save money and use the phone book for a text.

I had a freshman in a calculus I class who seemed to get the calculus pretty well but asked me why x/a = (1/a) x.

Why teach algebra to your students when you haven't taught them arithmetic?

Because in the scheme of things maybe it doesn't matter?