Making maths mandatory prevents us from discovering and developing young talent
Atypical US school day finds some 6 million high school students and 2 million college freshmen struggling with algebra. In both high school and college, all too many students are expected to fail.

Why do we subject U.S. students to this ordeal? I’ve found myself moving toward the strong view that we shouldn’t. My question extends beyond algebra and applies more broadly to the usual mathematics sequence, from geometry through calculus. State regents and leg
islators – and much of the public – take it as self-evident that every young person should be made to master polynomial functions and parametric equations.

There are many defenses of algebra and the virtue of learning it. Most of them sound reasonable on first hearing; many of them I once accepted. But the more I examine them, the clearer it seems that they are largely or wholly wrong – unsupported by research or evidence, or based on wishful logic.

(I’m not talking about quantitative skills, critical for informed citizenship and
personal finance, but a very different ballgame.) Making mathematics mandatory prevents us from discovering and developing young talent. In the interest of maintaining rigor, we’re actually depleting our pool of brainpower. I say this as a writer and social scientist whose work relies heavily on the use of numbers. My aim is not to spare students from a difficult subject, but to call attention to the real problems we are causing by misdirecting precious resources.

The toll mathematics takes begins early. One in four of ninth-graders fails to finish high school. Most of the educators I’ve talked with cite algebra as the major academic reason.
Shirley Bagwell, a longtime Tennessee teacher, warns that “To expect all students to master algebra will cause more students to drop out.” For those who stay in school, there are often ‘exit exams,’ almost all of which contain an algebra component.

Yes, young people should learn to read and write and do long division. But there is no reason to force them to grasp vectorial angles and discontinuous functions. Think of math as a huge boulder we make everyone pull, without assessing what all this pain achieves. So why require it, without alternatives or exceptions? Thus far I haven’t found a compelling answer.