From the article, which runs off the rails after this "In today’s world, most of us really do need to master algebraic thinking."
In practice its a class based (several meanings of class...) sorting/filtering path for students... this group will successfully take orders from above to handle unusual logical problems with some stability, discipline, and a self directed very short term plan (aka future supervisor material) and this group of kids can't/won't and will end up working underneath the first group as proles.
Unless you think most people will become supervisory workers or above, its just not necessary.
The explicit example in the article was "Creating formulas in a spreadsheet" (paraphrasing a bit). Is that really a task that will never be required of non-supervisory workers?
I'm really not sure where you're going with this, or what it is that you see as "run[ning] off the rails".
Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard.
In practice its a class based (several meanings of class...) sorting/filtering path for students... this group will successfully take orders from above to handle unusual logical problems with some stability, discipline, and a self directed very short term plan (aka future supervisor material) and this group of kids can't/won't and will end up working underneath the first group as proles.
Unless you think most people will become supervisory workers or above, its just not necessary.