Been having a lot of thoughts about the purpose of mandatory math education, about what kids and teens should be learning from math class. Mulling it over for the past few weeks
I think it's helpful to think of math as a form of literacy: kids need to learn math because when they become adults people will be making arguments to them either using logical reasoning or numerical evidence and sometimes those arguments are in good faith and sometimes the arguments are complete bull. Students should learn enough math so that they can tell when sometimes trying to lie to them with numbers. Relatedly, kids would learn enough math so that when they're adults they can advocate for themselves and back it up with numbers.
Same thing as regular literacy: if someone's not literate, they're dependant on what people tell them that a contract says, they can't read it and know for themself which puts them at risk. They can't see a claim and go do research to find out for themself, they can't advocate for themself and back it up with evidence. This is why literacy is so damned important.
I think math is the same way. If you can't understand the numbers on a car loan, you're at the mercy of whoever explains it to you. If you can't understand the basics of polling or of statistics, then you can't figure out when people (scammers, scummu politicians, anyone) are using that to feed you bullshit. If you can't take a bunch of numbers and put them into a table and look at trends and explain why those trends mean something, then you can't argue to your boss with evidence why you need a pay raise, or to your landlord that they are overcharging you, etc.
I think that's why learning math is important. That's why it's bad when kids don't learn math.
There's a bunch of other things that i think would be good if they got it from math class, like an appreciation for numbers and learning proofs and enough math to go into sciences.
But if the point of math class was learning algorithms and computations - or even if the point of was proofs and the stuff mathematicians do and learning to find the beauty in patterns! - then math should be an elective.
Because when prime company that they're never going to need to solve a quadratic equation or find the derivative of a function in real life, then (with the small exception of kids who go on to be scientists or mathematicias or theoretical computer scientists) they're right. That's not the point.
But everyone needs to be able to tell when a politician is lying to them.
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