Why Did San Francisco Schools Stop Teaching Algebra in Middle School? (2016)
This seems so strange to me, this sharp distinction between algebra and non-algebra. I might have gone to school in the Soviet system so everything was backwards and such but we were introduced to <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Elementary_algebra" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Elementary_algebra</a> very early and just did simple expression transformations, variable substitutions. That was a lot early than 8th grade. I even taught my 2nd grader a few of those.<p>I have observed the curriculum so far in US, at least up until the 2nd grade and it&#x27;s a hot mess. Even for double digit addition problems they jump right into &quot;cool tricks&quot; and &quot;mathematical thinking&quot; while there are just really a few steps to memorize and, guess what, kids are great at memorizing stuff. Later on it&#x27;s time to show a few short-cuts and kids even discover those themselves.<p>Now going back to algebra, I am firm believer that a simplified version of this has to be introduced much earlier. It&#x27;s a bit like a spiral, do basic arithmetic, geometry, number line manipulation, simple word problems, next year do the same but more complicated, add some algebra in there and so on.<p>But I guess that&#x27;s just too boring and teachers, and probably higher level authorities, decide that they need to do &quot;something&quot; so they start making changes just to they can slap something on their resume. Developers do that too some extent, &quot;here let me rewrite all this...&quot; we can certainly understand that, but doesn&#x27;t mean it&#x27;s a good thing.