Why Algebra 2?

More and more home­school­ers are con­sid­er­ing end­ing their child’s high school math after geom­e­try. There are a few rea­sons for this: 

1. Some col­leges are requir­ing col­lege alge­bra regard­less of high school math study
2. Their stu­dents are strug­gling with math 
3. They aren’t plan­ning to go to a university
4. They don’t under­stand why we study high­er lev­el math

Did you know that carpenter’s tools are shortcuts created from trigonometry?

These are valid con­cerns and I think address­ing them indi­vid­u­al­ly seems to make the most sense: 

1. most col­leges do require at least col­lege alge­bra, but they also often have a way for a stu­dent to test out of the course. If your stu­dent has com­plet­ed pre cal­cu­lus in high school, then she should be able to study for and pass col­lege alge­bra exam. Com­plet­ing alge­bra 2 and pre calc in high school is cer­tain­ly cheap­er than pay­ing for a high school lev­el math in college. 
2. a stu­dent who strug­gles with math at the age of 17 will most like­ly still strug­gle at 19. The dif­fer­ence is the pace. While the math­e­mat­ics in the col­lege alge­bra is on par with the high school alge­bra 2 course, the pace is twice as fast. If your stu­dent is strug­gling through Alge­bra 2, then I’d rec­om­mend tak­ing an extra year in high school to repeat it over try­ing to do it twice as fast in two years. 
3. I know that I am going to make some peo­ple upset when I ask: Why does every­thing have to cen­ter around the uni­ver­si­ty? Just because your child may not be plan­ning to pur­sue a four year under­grad­u­ate degree does­n’t not mean he isn’t wor­thy of a great edu­ca­tion! The ben­e­fits of the study of Alge­bra 2 go far beyond the uni­ver­si­ty enroll­ment process. 
4. Which leads to this rea­son: Why do we study high­er lev­el math­e­mat­ics any­way? Uni­ver­si­ty require­ments aside, the study of a hard top­ic, which requires mul­ti­ple steps, com­plex think­ing, and focus builds both char­ac­ter, work eth­ic, and brain cells in a stu­dent. When I’m look­ing for a course to turn my boys into men, I look to high­er math. There are few cours­es as chal­leng­ing at the high school level. 

So there you have it. Four rea­sons why peo­ple don’t, but should study alge­bra 2.