“What is the use of learning algebra? This will never happen in real life!” Current students are not the only one who have asked this question in math class. However, the question deserves a serious and detailed response; algebra is not a school subject that students survive and then forget. Algebraic thinking has a long-lasting impact on the way student's brain works, and this is true for anyone, whether they become an engineer or an artist.
Let's first dispel a myth. "Never going to use this in real life" is typically used when referring to not solving for x in 3x + 5 = 20. But algebra is not about x, it's about patterns and relationships. Algebra is the ability to identify patterns and apply them to make predictions. Algebra is when someone is given two data plans by their phone company, and asked to determine which one is the better deal for them, depending on how much data they use. If one uses algebra to figure out how many hours they need to babysit their neighbor's children for example, in order to pay for their concert tickets, then that's algebra! These reasoning skills are used every day by adults, but they do not always refer to it as algebra.
Secondly, algebra helps students to expand their thinking capacities. In algebra, someone is taught to solve a problem in their head, to rearrange the numbers to solve the problem, to work backwards from the number they want to get to that number by working backwards, and to see if the answer is sensible. These skills can be used in other classes, as well as in math class. In mathematics education research, the abstract features of algebra (e.g., the symmetry in group theory) have been argued to equip students with similar abstract thinking skills and to be connected to other mathematics concepts that are taught across school mathematics (Veith & Bitzenbauer, 2022). To be honest, abstraction is challenging - research conducted with concept inventories to uncover students' misconceptions about their natural propensities shows that many students initially mix up some of the basic properties like commutativity and associativity (Veith et al., 2022). But they also discover that with proper teaching of algebra, students make demonstrable and noticeable improvements - abstraction is exactly what they are doing.
Lastly, algebra is the language of today's world. Someone plays video games that are based on algebra, they have a phone that is based on algebra, they have algorithms that suggest their music, they have statistics about their favorite team, all of these are based on algebra. A person familiar with algebra will not be easily confused by politicians playing with numbers to fool them, and will be able to figure out a store's “discount” offer. Math literacy is not limited to science or the arts - it's for citizenship.
Some students believe that they do not require to learn algebra because they will use a calculator or an application to do calculations. But these tools can only provide answers to the questions they are asked. However, Algebra helps students to know what questions they can ask. It's a matter of knowing how to use a map to identify a location versus a GPS to identify the exact directions to the location.
None of the above is meant to suggest that algebra is always easy or that students should not be frustrated with algebra or that schools should not attempt to make algebra more meaningful to students. Algebra is hard to work out, but it does not mean that it is a waste of time. So, when someone asks, why do we need to learn algebra, what will be the answer?
