[bdjsiqoocwk]

Regarding doing things algorithmically without understanding what's going on: sure, you have a point no doubt. But here's my counterpoint. What is the point of school? If you're teaching kids because you want them to be able to solve problems, why teach them algebra? How many times in their life does an average person have to find the solution to x+20=3x+8 to solve a real life problem? If you want to teach useful algorithms you should get rid of algebra and have schools teach taxes, personal hygiene, physical exercise, maintenance of house, car, etc and stuff like that.

But if the point of school isn't "teach them practical algorithms", but instead learning how to think, then it makes perfect sense to teach them equations, and have them actual understand.

I'm short, if the point of school is to learn how to think, teaching them some mysterious algorithms isn't going to achieve that. If the point is to learn useful algorithms, I can think of 100 better things than algebra.

So which one is it?