Retirement Reflections of a Community College Teacher

 

While lifelong learning is everyone's aspiration, time and age make lifelong teaching impossible. That being the case, I will retire as a Math Faculty member from San Jose City College at the end of the spring semester. After 15 years, I leave with an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the opportunity to nurture eager knowledge seekers and see them bloom. Few things in life can equal the satisfaction of seeing students find their academic footing and face life with confidence and creativity.

I came to teaching late in life after spending three restless decades at various hi-tech companies in Silicon Valley. “An aim in life,” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson, “is the only fortune worth finding.” It is possible to go through an entire lifetime without finding one’s “fortune.” I am grateful I found mine after years of wandering in the technological wilderness.

Here are some personal observations on teaching and learning related to community colleges and the challenges they confront moving forward.

First, community college students, many first-generation from low-income families, hunger for affirmation of their worth. They are like dormant seeds waiting for rain and expect us to be that rain. While they understand that teachers require rigor and excellence from them, they also expect such expectations to be tempered by compassion and some occasional humor.

Here’s an example. Maria looked lost on the first day of my statistics class. I saw fear in her eyes, even tears. She emailed me after two weeks that she was behind and couldn’t even understand Measures of Center. “Should I drop your class?” she asked.

After a little thinking, I replied, “Don’t drop. Let’s meet during office hours and see what we can do.”

We met twice weekly over the next several weeks, going over problems step by step. “It’s not easy,” I told her. “I had the same difficulty you are facing when I was learning this.”

Slowly, Maria began making progress. She took charge of her learning. One day she stunned me by disclosing, “I had a brain aneurysm three years ago and am still recovering from it. But it’s finally clicking in my brain.”

Maria received a well-deserved “A” in my class and is currently majoring in psychology at a local university. Miracles occur at the intersection of “highly demanding” and “highly supportive” for both students and teachers.

Second, students engage if they see the relevance of what they learn in the classroom to what they experience in their lives outside the classroom. Should they buy that laptop warranty (probability and statistics)? How do doctors put the brakes on a pandemic (exponential growth of viruses versus exponential decay via vaccines)? How does math relate to English, physics and other disciplines (real-life problems span disciplines) that reveal their synergy? Relevance and connections deepen intuition and imagination and help students appreciate the power and beauty of their subjects.

Third, we owe it to our students to bring fresh insights and perspectives into our teaching even if we have taught the same material a thousand times. This requires keeping up with the latest developments in our changing fields. How do we capture patterns with mathematical formulas, whether the patterns are in sunflower spirals or the emergence of underground cicadas? How can we differentiate True Positives from False Positives in clinical tests while taking into account the Base Rate? How does math relate to democracy, elections, birthrates and healthcare? We must reflect in our teaching the dynamic nature of knowledge.

Fourth, student affirmations inspire teachers too! We also need to know from time to time that we are igniting the curiosity of students and instilling in them the joy of learning. Every semester, I get an email or two from students that make my spirit soar. One recent missive reads: "I've been working on my psychology course and found myself repeatedly returning to concepts you taught us. Even though we focused on statistics, the way you explained numbers and analyses as tools to understand the world around us has had a lasting impact on me."
A single vote of student confidence per semester can be enough vindication for a teacher.

Now to challenges, specifically two. First is the one posed by the Genie in the Bottle, also known as Artificial Intelligence (AI), and its even more powerful version, Artificial General intelligence (AGI), capable of doing all cognitive tasks, and perhaps even more, than a human can do. Ask any question and tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s CoPilot and Google Gemini give sophisticated answers, albeit with errors that, with newer versions, become fewer. Having difficulty with a particularly pesky algebra or calculus problem? No problem, ask AI. “What effect does climate change have on human and animal migration? Illustrate with specific examples.” Rejoice, AI will create the whole enchilada for you!

Preventing students from using AI is as futile as King Canute commanding incoming tides to halt. The question is how to use AI to complement critical thinking and genuine learning among students without short-circuiting the process. Recently, the California State University (CSU) system (23 campuses, 460,000 students and 63,000 faculty and staff) and the University of California (UC) system, (9 campuses, 295,000 students and 265,000 faculty and staff), launched initiatives with leading Silicon Valley AI companies to train students and faculty in the best use of AI tools. California’s Community College (CCC) system, the largest in the nation with 116 colleges, over 2 million students and 91,328 faculty and staff, is pursuing similar goals. CCC’s Academic Senate has urged Chancellor Dr. Sonya Christian to establish a centralized CCC AI Commons to provide access to generative AI tools and resources for students, faculty and staff, to be modeled after CSU’s centralized AI Commons (https://genai.calstate.edu)

These initiatives are likely to go through several iterations before a coherent, consistent and ethical use of AI in education emerges. But the process has begun and that’s progress.

The second challenge is more daunting: The Trump Administration’s war on education. Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity (DEI) programs, a hallmark of community colleges, are being dismantled. There is pressure on colleges and universities to revise curricula to reflect a more conservative agenda. The threat of mass deportations has unsettled CCC’s estimated 100,000 undocumented students, including those protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). To counter the threat, colleges are stepping up efforts to provide legal protection to students and their families. My college, for instance, like most CCC’s, is offering free legal and mental health services to allay the uncertainty, anxiety and fear of students.

On the eve of retirement, two opposing thoughts occupy me. The first is sadness at the enormous damage the Trump administration is inflicting on education in general and our colleges and universities in particular. The second is my faith in the resilience and power of our institutions to protect the vulnerable and the marginalized while inspiring excellence among students, and to sustain the freedoms that define our democracy. There may be a few defeats and setbacks initially, but I am confident our institutions will come through with their values and principles not only restored but also enhanced.

Raising the Level of Reading Comprehension of Students at Community Colleges

Emphasis on Student Learning Objectives (SLOs) and grades should not divert us, the math faculty at community colleges, from our main goal: a meaningful and quality education for our students. SLOs and evaluations are necessary but we need to recognize that other factors are also important. One such is reading comprehension, the ability of students to understand what they are reading, particularly word problems. While students can answer straightforward questions like “Let A and B be events with P(A) = 0.8, P(B) = 0.1 and P(B|A) = 0.2, Find P(A and B)” or solve quadratic equations like x² – 7x + 11 = 0, they are sometimes unable to parse sentences in word problems to figure out what needs to be done, far less solve them. 

Yet it is word problems that help students connect with the real world, encourage them to think about relationships between numbers, and reveal interdisciplinary connections between mathematics and subjects such as English, physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology and environmental science.

Here is an example from statistics that illustrates how a lack of reading comprehension becomes a barrier for students to solve word problems.

Statistics (section 7.2, Elementary Statistics by Navidi and Monk): According to the National Health Statistics Reports, the heights of adult women in the United States are normally distributed with a mean of 64 inches and a standard deviation of 4 inches. If three women are selected at random, what is the probability that at least one of them is more than 68 inches tall?

The first difficulty students face is the phrase “At least 1”. The second is with the meaning and implication of the word “random.”

Students had learned one of the probability formulas in a previous section: “Probability (At Least 1) = 1 – Probability (None)”. They have no difficulty running “normalcdf” in their calculators to determine the probability when the parameters are explicitly given. However, connecting the formula and the idea of randomness and “normalcdf” to this problem seems beyond the capacity of most students. It comes down to a reading comprehension issue.

After carefully parsing the sentence “If three women are selected at random, what is the probability that at least one of them is more than 68 inches tall,” they slowly begin to make the connections. To ensure comprehension, I ask students to write complete sentences describing the steps they use to solve word problems such as this “if you want full credit.”

That last clause gets their attention.

This is a typical writing sample from approximately 60% of the students (the other 40% struggle to express themselves) who write complete sentences to describe the steps:

a) Find the probability that any one of the three randomly selected women is shorter than 68 inches by running (TI-84) normalcdf (0, 68, 64, 4) = 0.841. That is, the probability that a woman picked at random has a height between 0 and 68 inches is 0.841.
b) Since the three women are selected at random (no connection between them, that is, they are “independent” of each other), the probability that ALL three women are shorter than 68 inches is, by the multiplication law of probability,
P (A and B and C) = P (A) x P(B) x P(C) = (0.841)³ = 0.595.
c) Apply the “At Least 1” formula: Since the sum of all probabilities = 1, and since “At Least 1” includes all possibilities other than 0 or None, “At Least 1” and “None” include ALL possibilities between them. They are complements of each other. Therefore,
P(At Least 1) + P(None) = 1; P(At Least 1) = 1 – P(None)
Probability (At least One Woman taller than 68 inches) = 1 – 0.595 = 0.405

(Occasionally, a few students will go further and fill in more details. This is typical of what they write: To calculate P (At Least 1) directly requires the calculation of 7 different probabilities for this particular problem.
1. A is taller than 68 inches but not B and C  
OR

2. B is taller than 68 inches but not A and C  
OR
3. C is taller than 68 inches but not A and B  
OR

4. A and B are taller than 68 inches but not C  
OR

5. A and C are taller than 68 inches but not B  
OR
6. B and C are taller than 68 inches but not A  
OR

7. A, B and C are all taller than 68 inches

The only other option is
8. All of them (A, B, and C) are equal to or shorter than 68 inches, that is, NONE are taller than 68 inches.

The sum of all 8 probabilities = 1. So a) either I calculate the probabilities for options 1 through 7 individually and sum them, which is tedious and can lead to mistakes, or b) I do option 8 and subtract it from 1, which gives me the sum of probabilities for 1 through 7. It's easier to use option b, a neat trick!)

One or two students who take meticulous notes of what I emphasize in class will also add something like this:
“Even though entering actual heights between two boundaries gives the area under the bell curve, which is equivalent to the relevant probability, the calculator converts the heights into their corresponding z-scores ‘behind the scene.’ The area under the curve can be interpreted as probability only when the actual values, the heights in this case, are converted to their corresponding z-scores.”

I insist on complete sentences to explain the solutions to word problems because it becomes a test for students to see how well they understand the problems, that is, how good their reading comprehension is. Reading carefully clarifies their thinking, which, in turn, leads to clear writing. Reading and writing reinforce each other in a creative loop. Since language is the basis of thought, reading and writing well allow students to think well too. Students discover that this is true not just for English but also for math. 

I find it helpful to emphasize to students that they can often figure out solutions to hard problems as they go along. Many students, at least initially, have the mindset that they can only start when they have figured out the entire solution, so they never start!

(Other examples from statistics: Write complete sentences explaining the meaning of a confidence interval or the implications of rejecting or not rejecting the null hypothesis in a given context. Explain why switching events in conditional probability (“confusion of the inverse”) leads to different probability results. Describe a “black swan” event and whether or not you have experienced one that had a significant impact on your life. Should you buy that warranty or that lottery ticket? Why or why not?)

There is a lot of resentment in the beginning (typical reaction: this is not an English class!) but gradually students come around to appreciate the symbiotic relationship between reading comprehension and clear thinking and writing.

Precalculus word problems are good examples of showing interdisciplinary connections. Example: Throwing an object upward to calculate the highest point reached and the time it takes to get there and fall back to earth under the influence of gravity shows the connection between math and physics. Exponential functions describing radioactive decay and carbon dating show the connection between math, physics, chemistry, archeology and paleontology. Extinction of species shows the connections between math, biology, environmental science and climate change. A mathematical model for how we forget what we learn over time shows the connection between time and memory. And so on. One writing exercise I assign students is to describe how the irrational number “e” harnesses the power of infinity in a limiting sense, in situations where things happen continuously, like birth and death in a population. (Unintended humor: A student wrote that “e” captures eternity rather than infinity!)

Some students ask for extra-credit projects because they are falling behind and want to bring their grades up. One project I often assign is to define the meaning of 10 words in both day-to-day context and mathematical contexts and to construct a sentence for each. Example: “irrational” usually means unreasonable or illogical but in mathematics, an irrational number, such as pi or e, is a number that cannot be expressed as a ratio of two integers. As a decimal, an irrational number neither terminates nor repeats.

Example: Define the following words in their mathematical and
non-mathematical contexts and write a sentence for each: Function, Eccentricity, Rational, Random, Sample, Population, Outlier, Probabilistic, Deterministic, and Complex.

We faculty are constrained by time. We have to teach courses, grade tests and quizzes, assess SLOs, maintain and monitor Learning Management Systems such as Canvas, track attendance, tutor students, maintain office hours and perform a host of other activities. Where is the time to raise the level of reading comprehension and encourage writing with clarity and precision? How can we instill the habit of paying deep attention and cultivating such skills as patience, curiosity, discipline and grit, necessary for academic and professional success, when we are constantly juggling time to complete so many basic faculty duties and responsibilities?

There is no easy or single answer to this. Perhaps the first step is to recognize that we need to look beyond SLOs, grades, performance and achievement by integrating some habits and practices in our teaching that can help students think clearly and independently and live courageously and confidently. One such practice, in my opinion, is to improve their reading comprehension by paying attention to what they read (difficult, given the continuous digital distractions) and writing the steps clearly and precisely as they slowly work their way toward solving word problems.

Good mathematics, like good reading and writing, requires an appreciation of structure, beauty, rhythm, and pattern. If we can make this idea an integral part of our teaching, as best fits our respective temperaments, we may consistently experience the joy that comes from shaping minds, semester after semester.

California must reverse community college enrollment decline

 You can also read the article in the San Jose Mercury News

Enrollment at California’s 116 community colleges has fallen from the pre-pandemic peak of 2.1 million to 1.8 million, a decline of over 14%. It is critical that enrollment increases in the nation’s largest higher education system. Community colleges provide zero to low-cost quality education that gives students from struggling to middle-income families the skills needed to make a decent and meaningful living. If enrollment continues to decline, more Californians will miss out on the American promise than ever before.

How to increase enrollment at community colleges? As a math professor at San Jose City College (SJCC), I have three ideas based on my experience with students.

First, widen the scope of Community College’s High School Dual or Concurrent Enrollment.

In the summer of 2022, I had the privilege of teaching math at SJCC’s Milpitas extension, a collaboration between the Milpitas Unified School District and SJCC. To see students from 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grades earning college credits while attending high school to get a head start in their college careers was inspiring. We had animated discussions about applying quadratic equations to describe the arc of a baseball, exponential functions to describe the growth of viruses and probability to quantify uncertainty.

As expected, some dual-enrollment students attend SJCC after graduating from high school each year. While many community colleges have similar collaborations with their local high schools, Kern County Community College District spanning the San Joaquin Valley, eastern Sierra and Mojave Desert being one of the largest, there remains room for growth. SJCC, for instance, can collaborate with more local schools through an effective outreach program to ensure a steady stream of new students.

Second, improve the quality of college websites.

This seems obvious but is often overlooked. Online users, particularly prospective or current students, spend on average three minutes and visit 2-3 pages per session during which they either find what they are looking for or they leave. Many community college websites are clunky and confusing. Finding information often turns into a wild-goose chase. Students complain, and I verified it myself, that it is easier to retrieve information from the SJCC website through Google than through the website itself. Even the basic task of enrolling for a class can be a challenge.

Effective websites have no clutter and have elements that spark digital joy, such as easy navigation, mobile friendliness, fewer clicks for information and accessibility for all. Build coherent websites, and they will come.

Third, California’s community colleges must become equal partners to the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems. With a population of just over 39 million and an estimated GDP of about $4 trillion, California is poised to overtake Germany as the fourth-largest economy in the world, behind only the United States, China and Japan.

California’s economy has a strong positive correlation with the quality of education it offers its residents. While the eight-campus UC and 23-campus CSU systems have a combined student population of about 750,000 from relatively well-to-do families, our 116 community colleges educate more than double that many students.

California’s 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education that vastly privileges UCs and CSUs over community colleges is obsolete. Technology has transformed teaching and learning and the dynamics between research and career. To paraphrase Dorothy, “Toto, I have a feeling we are not in the ‘60s anymore.”

California’s community colleges do the heavy lifting of educating most of its students beyond high schools, especially those from disadvantaged families. By offering baccalaureate degrees without any constraints from UCs and CSUs, for example, community colleges can attract more students, one of the ways to ensure that the Golden State will continue to flourish for decades to come.

Bachelor's Degrees from California's Community Colleges

‘The Times They Are a-Changin',’ sang Bob Dylan in 1964.

A half-century later, the times are indeed changing dramatically for California’s community colleges.

State officials recently chose 15 colleges to offer four-year Bachelor’s degrees in high-need fields, ranging from air frame manufacturing technology and dental hygiene to health information management to automotive technology, by the fall of 2016.

A total of 34 out of California’s 112 community colleges competed to be in the program.

The right to award 4-year bachelor’s degree, instead of the usual 2-year associate degree, has profound implications for California. Until now, 4-years degrees were the exclusive domain of the California State University (CSU) and the University of California systems. Students equated the CSU and the UC systems with higher education in the state.

Now they can count on a new partner, California Community Colleges (CCC), after the Legislature passed Senate Bill 850 last year that removed this stifling restriction on community colleges, designed more than 50 years ago as part of California’s Master Plan for Higher Education.

Two immediate benefits will be in affordability and in meeting the urgent needs of California’s knowledge-based economy.

First, it will cost students about $10,500 over four years for a bachelor’s degree at a community college, whereas the same degree now costs $22,000 even at the low-cost CSU.

Second, only by including community colleges in the loop can California hope to produce 1 million more workers with bachelor’s degrees by 2020 to meet its workforce needs.

The golden state, however, is not the trailblazer in this regard: it joins 21 other states where community colleges have been offering bachelor’s degrees for some years now.

Still, better late than never.

The 15 community colleges selected to offer bachelor’s degrees in specific fields are:

Antelope Valley College - Airframe manufacturing technology
Bakersfield College - Industrial automation
Crafton Hills College - Emergency services and allied health systems
Cypress College - Mortuary science
Feather River College - Equine industry
Foothill College (Bay Area) and West Los Angeles College - Dental hygiene
Mira Costa College - Bio-manufacturing
Skyline College (Bay Area) and Modesto Junior College - Respiratory care
Rio Hondo College - Automotive technology
Mesa College and Shasta College - Health information management
Santa Ana College - Occupational studies
Santa Monica College - Interaction design

By itself it is a remarkable development, but combined synergistically with “America’s College Promise” that President Obama unveiled in his State of the Union address on January 20, 2015, the right of community colleges to award bachelor’s degrees makes it even more so.

Said the President in his address:  “… I am sending this Congress a bold plan to lower the cost of community college – to zero. Forty percent of our college students choose community college. Some are young and starting out. Some are older and looking for a better job. Some are veterans and single parents trying to transition back into the job market. Whoever you are, this plan is your chance to graduate ready for the new economy, without a load of debt. Understand, you've got to earn it - you've got to keep your grades up and graduate on time.”

It is true that need-based Pell-Grants already make community colleges virtually free for poor and working-class students. The grants this year, for instance, cover up to $5,730 in college costs, while the average community college tuition runs about $3,800. However, if tuition becomes free, students can use their Pell-Grants to cover expenses such as textbooks, housing and transportation, factors that often derail student graduation more than tuition.

About 7.7 million Americans attend community college for credit, of whom 3.1 million attend full time and 4.6 million part time, according to the American Association of Community Colleges, based on 2012 data. The California Community Colleges make up the largest higher education system in the nation, providing a gateway to higher education for over 2 million students per year.

California’s community college system has crossed the Rubicon. The future looks promising and bright for millions of Californians who can now count on an affordable and quality bachelor’s degree to lead creative and fulfilling lives.

Bachelor's Degrees in Community Colleges

The 1960 master plan for higher education in California identified the following distinct roles for its three-tier system:
- University of California (UC) is to be the state’s primary public research university, with authority to grant bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral, and other professional degrees.
- California State University (CSU) is to focus on liberal arts and sciences and grant bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
- California Community College (CCC) is to offer lower-division instruction transferable to 4-year colleges, provide remedial and vocational training, and grant two-year associate’s degree.

According to the plan, the top 12.5 percent of all graduating public high school students are eligible for admission to UC, the top 33.3 percent for admission to CSU, and all persons 18 years or older who can “benefit from instruction” are eligible to attend CCC.

Fifty plus years later, it is clear that dramatic shifts in California’s demography, mode of education, jobs and “facts on ground” require a thorough review of the master plan and quick enactment of core recommendations from educators, legislators, teachers, unions and students.

Although the plan had gone through several official reviews in 50 years, resulting in hundreds of recommendations, only a few, and that too at the most superficial level, had seen the light of day.

It is clear to anyone but the most jaded and reactive segment of the population that the master plan, designed when baby boomers were reaching college age, fails to serve the needs of Californians in the 21^st Century. A high school diploma that back then would have sufficed for a managerial position is more likely to elicit scorn for even a door-to-door sales position now. 

Nowhere has the master plan’s inadequacy become more apparent than in the objectives it set for California’s community colleges half-a-century ago.  

It is imperative that the role and scope of the CCC system be expanded as soon as possible not only to increase graduation rates but also to meet the Golden State’s growing workforce needs.

There are two areas in which immediate intervention is required.

First, the increasing complexity in transferring credits to CSUs and UCs force many community college students to repeat courses, which not only delay their progress but sometimes force them to drop out. Students who take prescribed courses and do well are, in theory, guaranteed admission to CSU or UC systems. That’s the problem: the plan works mostly in theory and not often enough in practice. This has to change immediately if the CSU and UC systems are serious about educating all eligible Californians for purposeful employment and self-fulfillment.

Second, and more importantly, community colleges should have the right to grant bachelor’s degrees in selected vocational fields, such as nursing, automotive and biotechnology, to meet workforce demand and boost employment.

Demand for nursing, for instance, is consistently strong. But CSUs cannot graduate nearly enough nurses for the healthcare system. Many community colleges, on the other hand, have been training nurses for decades. (Evergreen Valley College in San Jose, to name only one, has had a top flight nursing program for several years).

What can be more logical than the right to confer bachelor’s degree in a field that community colleges are eminently qualified to do?

Nothing, except that officials from universities and private colleges, fearing competition, are vigorously lobbying against the idea, claiming that granting four-year degrees would undermine the original mission of the two-year system.

This is, of course, a red herring. Universities and private colleges are trying to protect their turf at the expense of justice and economic well-being of Californians, particularly those from poor families and rural areas.

Despite their resistance, Brice Harris, Chancellor of California’s 112 community colleges with its 2.4 million students, has appointed a 16-member panel to consider the plan. The group includes faculty, administrators, a student, a college trustee and representatives of UC and CSU systems. (In all fairness, the panel should include more student representatives since it is their future that is at stake.)

Californians must throw their support behind the plan to allow community colleges the right to grant four-year degrees, at least in selected vocational fields. While cost and accreditation issues will certainly pose challenges, they are expected to be more than compensated by employment and economic benefits.

Besides, California would merely be following a growing trend: As many as 21 states have already approved baccalaureate programs at community colleges, most recently Michigan, which last year granted junior colleges authority to offer four-year degrees in a limited number of fields such as maritime technology and culinary arts.

Proposed in 1960, California’s master plan for higher education no longer fits the bill. The time has come for its significant overhaul, one of which would be to enlarge the scope and power of community colleges in granting four-year degrees in selected fields. After all, if public colleges cannot meet the aspirational and professional needs of their communities in the 21^st century, how can they continue to be called “community” colleges?

How Important is Algebra?

A professor of political science named Andrew Hacker of Queens College, New York, published a provocative op-ed piece in the New York Times titled, “Is Algebra Necessary?”

It elicited strong rebuttals, most of them, as expected, from math professors around the country. Hacker’s thesis is that there is no evidence that mastering polynomial functions or parametric equations will be of any benefit to students fearful of algebra or to those aspiring to excel in subjects that have no connection with algebra or mathematics in general. He cites statistics in which most educators blame algebra as the reason for the high drop-out rate from our schools and colleges.

The professor gives California’s two university systems as proof of the harm that algebra does to students. The universities 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.”

The article generated strong reaction among students of California’s community colleges. Is algebra an impediment to their goals, or is it a difficult subject they must master anyway to acquire analytical skills and learn the value of hard work, traits required in any profession?

David, who is taking intermediate algebra this Fall, disagrees with Hacker’s contention that the emphasis should be on applied math and algebra for specific, everyday problems. As he sees it, learning only the math we need for specific situations ignores the underlying thought process that governs how the formulas work. “If we tailor math only for certain situations, we will raise a generation of people that can quote memorized steps without any understanding of WHY they work.” As to Hacker’s contention that algebra should be cut because it is ‘too hard’ implies that chemistry, physics, Art, English should also be cut because some students find these subjects hard as well. “Many people go into college without a solid base from high school and need a refresher to prepare them for the very rigorous course of study required to graduate from college. The rigor of higher education needs to be maintained for all these degrees to mean anything, and thus the requirements must be high, and to meet those requirements students need a good general education, and to have a good general education students absolutely must have a good understanding of algebra and the logical thinking required to work out the problems even without close instruction.”

“There is also the sad fact that without being prodded, most people don't care to challenge themselves to a higher understanding of algebra and mathematics. People must be forced to do it before they realize that they like it. The people who discover a love for algebra become the future of the field. If we do not require it, we will lose these people and soon afterwards, we will decline in our ability to understand it.”

Henry struggles with algebra but still feels that it should continue to be a core subject. “Whether you are a doctor measuring medication to inject into a patient or construction worker mixing cement, it all involves math.  Algebra isn’t easy but neither is life. So struggle is good for us to prepare for life.”

Kendal knows how hard algebra is. She had to take the course three times before she was able to get a passing grade. “If you don’t understand chapter 4, you will not understand chapter 5. Algebra builds on itself. I always thought I was bad in math until I realized that I was bad because I wasn’t paying attention and not putting in the hard work. Prof. Hacker says that students who are unable to pass algebra drop out or are denied admission to colleges of their choice and are unable to get decent jobs with good pay. To that I say, who would want to hire someone who quit when the going got tough? While the formulas used in algebra are not used in everyday life, the lesson of working hard to achieve a goal will be with the student for life. I wouldn’t walk into the Google campus and expect to be hired as a lawyer and then be pissed that they didn’t hire me because I haven’t passed the bar. Algebra weeds out those who aren’t dedicated or motivated to succeed.”

Frank agrees with Hacker and believes that any math beyond pre-algebra should not be a requirement. “Once we have learned how to do simple math for everyday life, it should be enough. It just causes stress when so many other things are going on in a student’s life. I know a lot of successful people who don’t even know pre-algebra. If you want to be a rocket scientist or a chemist, go for high-level math. But math beyond pre-algebra is a waste of time for most students.”

Intesar feels that removing algebra will be detrimental to the learning process. ”If algebra is removed, what next? English? Geometry? The U.S. ranks 14^th among developed countries in Math! This is not good for a country that wields enormous power and influence in the world. We are now importing scientists from other countries instead of creating our own scientists. When I am reaching for a goal, I must struggle. Otherwise, accomplishments are worthless. We must not avoid algebra because it is hard.”

Lisa can relate to the difficulty of algebra and feels that the course should not be a requirement but an option. Algebra causes many students to drop out of school. She has taken algebra multiple times. Just when she thinks she understands a concept, there comes another that messes up her understanding of the first. She knows many students who face the same problem.

Aubrea feels strongly that algebra is important for everyone to learn. “Algebra not only has to do with everyday math, it also helps students think logically, to think outside of the box. And it is always good to know algebra especially when our kids need help doing their algebra homework in the future.”

Christina often stresses the importance of algebra to her children but wonders how necessary algebra really is. “During my twenty five year career in the dental field and a couple of years in sales, I have applied my mathematical skills that I (barely) learned in high school, but I have never had an issue come up that a calculator or Google could not solve. I know others who dropped out of high school due to their inability to grasp algebra but they have gone on to make good careers without algebraic knowledge.”

Jonathan relates a personal story. “Back when I sold women’s shoes at Nordstrom, we had a power outage that brought down our fancy registers. But even with the power out, the show must go on. So with no light and no registers, we continued to write receipts, only we did it freehand. There was a problem, however. No one in my department knew how to calculate the sales tax. Luckily for them (and me), that was one of the few things from Algebra I remembered how to do. So for the next hour, while the power was still off, I was the go-to receipt scribbler!  When I was younger, before my Nordstrom days, I used to loathe Algebra. I thought that school should play to their student’s strengths and future interests, which for me certainly wasn’t anything math-related. Many years later, however, I’ve taken a more moderate stance. I believe a class called Practical Algebra would be really beneficial in not only opening people’s eyes to the benefits of Algebra but teaching them vital mathematical skills, as well.”