Why is algebra important in High School to College?
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So much of the “useless” stuff we learn in grade school and high school is exercise that primes our brains for different modes of thinking.
We know that kids who grow up in musical households have a better ear for music when they’re adults. We know that if kids don’t learn language before they’re five or six years old (as has been observed in cases of severe neglect and in feral children) their brains are much less able to learn language later on.
Even if you’re not going into a technical career where you have to be “doing math” on a daily basis, it’s still good for your brain to be exposed to it. Even if you aren’t good at it on a test, it’s good for your mental development to think about it and play with it. Later in life if you do find that you have to “do math” you’ll be better able to get your head around the basics than if you’d never been exposed to it when young.
Unfortunately institutionalized schooling focuses on test results and university admissions, so we think anyone who gets less than 70% on a math test is a failure, but they were still exercising their brains. Being able to run a mile in ten minutes is great, but being able to run a mile at all is still better than nothing.
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