Before trying to teach algebra with Mathematica or Maxima, I'd first start with a spreadsheet like Excel. There's a heck of a lot of math that can be taught with a spreadsheet, and these languages also have plotting/graphing. Also, being able to use a spreadsheet is good even for art students who want to keep track of their artwork, and for lawyers who want to keep track of their clients. At 10:03 AM 7/30/2012, Warren Smith wrote:

For what it is worth, I think it would be absolutely absurd to allow getting a CS college degree without knowing calculus.

I also have a hard time accepting the idea that general people do not need to know and should not be taught algebra. But the best argument for that stance might be (which is not mentioned at all in the newspaper of course) the advent of software like mathematica. I think that technology like that PERHAPS could be used to completely change traditional math education and both speed it up and make it better. Optimally, you'd learn the principles and ideas while skipping the drudgery and errors. I'm not sure if that goal is feasible, but I am fairly sure that the educators and software writers haven't yet put in a high quality attempt to accomplish it. There have been low-quality attempts which I never saw convincing evidence worked better than 1950s style teaching and may work worse. One thing I'd like to see in education is controlled experiments, like educate class #K with method #K. This would be easy to do in large universities. But I've never seen any ever do it.