Off topic - Is algebra necessary?

This editorial by Andrew Hacker written for the New York Times has sparked something that I have wondered over the last few years. It seems as though we push algebra even into the elementary levels before students are ready. Plus we force many of our students to take math that they will never even remotely use in their adult life. I'm not against adding rigor for our students, but shouldn't it be appropriate for the student?

Colleges use math as a bar for students to hurdle, one that might be too high for some.

"California’s two university systems, for instance, consider applications only from students who have taken three years of mathematics and in that way exclude many applicants who might excel in fields like art or history. Community college students face an equally prohibitive mathematics wall. A study of two-year schools found that fewer than a quarter of their entrants passed the algebra classes they were required to take."

It's possible to take these students and give them the math that they need, based on the job they will take after high school/college. This is a great example. 

"Even in jobs that rely on so-called STEM credentials — science, technology, engineering, math — considerable training occurs after hiring, including the kinds of computations that will be required. Toyota, for example, recently chose to locate a plant in a remote Mississippi county, even though its schools are far from stellar. It works with a nearby community college, which has tailored classes in “machine tool mathematics.”   

"...But a definitive analysis by the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce forecasts that in the decade ahead a mere 5 percent of entry-level workers will need to be proficient in algebra or above.

On the flip side, since elementary teaching has done away with much of the 'drill and kill' assignments, students have no basis upon which to fall back when doing algebra. I encounter high students on a daily basis in which multiplication and division are as foreign a concept as calculus. These students cannot complete an algebra problem because they never learned the basic skills. The problem is NOT algebra! 

Update
There have been a few responses to the editorial in the New York Times since then. This is from a blogger for Scientific American and I think she makes a great point here:

"Mathematicians are recruited by hedge funds, consulting firms, and technology companies not because they already know how to balance portfolios, what the best corporate strategies are, or how to optimize user interfaces, but because their mathematics degrees indicate experience and acuity at problem solving (bold added). It’s easier for companies to teach someone with a strong mathematics background how to do their specific work than to teach someone who knows the company business how to solve problems. And, like it or not, algebra is one of the first places students start to learn these problem solving skills." 

Update 2

One more blog post from Scientific American. It has a great quote from a Japanese educator as they made a shift away from math in the mid-1990's. 

"This kind of experiment has already been done. We need only look to our Eastern neighbor, Japan, for a glimpse of the kind of future this could bring. Caltech string theorist Hirosi Ooguri minced no words when he reacted to Hacker’s article on Facebook:

“This is extremely dangerous, and we should not just laugh at it. A similar argument led the Japanese Government to reduce elementary, junior high, and high school math education significantly during the 1990′s. In the past few years, the Government realized the mistake and is trying to reverse it. Unfortunately, a generation of children missed opportunities to get decent education in mathematics, and I am afraid that its negative effects will be felt for many years to come.” (Ooguri graciously granted permission to quote him).

He is referring to the yutori kyoiku (“room to grow”) educational policy that dramatically altered the elementary, junior high and high school curricula in Japan. It sounds great on paper: convinced that traditional rote memorization is insufficient in a 21st century world, Japanese students now were encouraged to develop individuality and initiative, and foster critical thinking and problem solving. The number of classroom hours was reduced, and so was the amount of required math. “Japanese had good basic study skills, so the idea was to add the more individualistic things that westerners have on top of that,” psychologist and author Hideki Wada told the Financial Times."

 

Let me know what you think.

Live to 100?

My paternal grandma lived to be 98, while my maternal grandparents lived to be over 90 before they passed. After watching this video, I think I might have a chance to live quite a long time! I did find this too though! "Findings based on millions of deaths suggest that shorter, smaller bodies have lower death rates and fewer diet-related chronic diseases, especially past middle age. Shorter people also appear to have longer average lifespans." UGH!

Plant Defense

We're all familiar with plant defenses such as thorns and toxins. I had a nasty case of poison ivy two years ago that I don't wish to repeat. This article identifies how barley fights off fungus using a protein in the cell that causes cell death. It's a fascinating situation of cell communication and programmed cell death to 'starve' the fungus.

21st Century Skills

Do you feel like this school (or any school) is getting you ready for your future? This article from CNN addresses the 21st century skills necessary for students to get a job.

Do you agree? Disagree? How well do you think you are being prepared for the future?

Discuss.

Does diet soda cause a bigger waist size?

This MSNBC article has this quote

In one study, people who drank two or more diet sodas a day had five times the increase in waist circumference over a 10-year period compared to people who didn't drink any diet soda. 

The research is also referenced here:

For one study, researchers at the center followed 474 diet soda drinkers, 65 to 74 years of age, for almost 10 years. They found that diet soda drinkers' waists grew 70 percent more than non-drinkers. Specifically, drinking two or more diet sodas a day busted belt sizes five times more than people who avoided the stuff entirely.

What about this study?

The other study may hold the answer. In it, researchers divided mice into two groups, one of which ate food laced with the popular sweetener aspartame. After three months, the mice eating aspartame-chow had higher blood sugar levels than the mice eating normal food. The authors said in a written statement their findings could "contribute to the associations observed between diet soda consumption and the risk of diabetes in humans."



What do you think of this? What other reasons could  cause this? Make sure you read through the entire article and identify the good and bad about the research. 

Update - New article from NBCnews.com