> I certainly think everyone has the mental capacity to understand algebra.
I invite you to tutor some middle school students then. For values of algebra that include “can be taught to draw the appropriate line given the corresponding equation” there are plenty who can’t understand algebra.
I don’t know about middle school kids, mine’s not there yet, he’s 9 - but he’s already done algebra, including simultaneous linear equations with multiple unknowns.
No powers, quadratic equation or differentiation and the like yet, but I can see the QE coming up in next years books (which we recently bought since 3rd grade just finished)
I’m pretty sure that when I was at school, this was a “senior school” (age 11-16) topic, and I was maybe 12 or 13. Kids are learning stuff earlier than they used to, at least it feels that way to me.
Oh, you can teach some six year olds algebra. It’s not impossibly hard. Some children are ready at a very young age. But some people you can teach it for a semester and every shaky grasp of the subject they got in four months will disappear completely in two weeks. Some people cannot do abstraction.
I invite you to tutor some middle school students then. For values of algebra that include “can be taught to draw the appropriate line given the corresponding equation” there are plenty who can’t understand algebra.