I just read a blog post by Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post. Valerie was sharing a post by Roger C. Schank, a cognitive scientist, artificial intelligence theorist, and education reformer.
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/no-algebra-isnt-necessary--and-yes-stem-is-overrated/2012/08/26/edc47552-ed2d-11e1-b09d-07d971dee30a_blog.html)
Schank taught at Stanford and Yale universities and is the John Evans Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, Psychology, and Education at Northwestern University. The former head of the Institute for the Learning Sciences, he is the author of “Teaching Minds: How Cognitive Science Can Save Our Schools."
Basically, his argument in this post is that we need less learning of algebra in our schools and more helping students to understand their cognitive abilities: "the ability to make an accurate prediction or describe situations, or diagnose a problem, or evaluate a situation, person or object."
I am supportive of Dr. Schank's perspective. Technology has seriously changed how much we need to memorize content, we have access to so much more than out brains can handle. At the same time it is very difficult to think without content to think about. Algebra is a value-symbol language, necessary to communicate certain types of concepts. How much of the language of algebra does every student need? For that matter, how much of any controlled curriculum content does every child need? These are difficult questions, and yet we obviously need to rethink schools and their functions.
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