<p>Mork- Ah, the dark ages. Yes, I had that same sequence in California in the late sixties/early seventies.
This was in gifted-accellerated tracking. There was not a push then to start
algebra early. As a group, we had exceptionally high SAT scores, got into lots of Ivy and other top schools, and</p>
<p>seemed to turn out just fine as engineers, MDs, etc.
In fact, I remember one child psychologist who felt that children’s brains were not developmentally prepared to do algebra before age 14, no matter how intelligent!
As I recall, he said something like “You can train a monkey to do just about anything, but that doesn’t mean he actually internalizes and understands it.”
Such a change from now, when we have seventh graders routinely taking algebra, and some parents pushing for even earlier.</p>