I LOATHE “we didn’t need to learn Algebra” people. Believe it or not it’s good for you to know things and engage with different subjects. And it’s highly likely you got an education for free on top of it? Idk I’m getting to a point where now that I’ve been out of school for a sizeable amount of time it’s like. Holy shit I got to be taught and instructed in so many things for FREE? FREE?!?!? And I didn’t have to work?!?!? I still would never relive high school but like. Damn my boomer take is you should be damn grateful you’re getting or have gotten an education.
I know this is the “arts and creative writing” website, but for all of the backlash against the “why were the curtains blue?” lack of critical thinking in english lit classes, there sure are a lot of people who are loud and proud about their profound ignorance of math.
Like, you’re going to have to calculate a tip, do your taxes, figure out if your mortgage broker is screwing you over, so many things. Don’t worry about it, you’re never going to need to know how to figure out whether you’re really getting the 32% commission that you’re owed, or be able to tell how many 1 inch boxes can fit into a 1 foot container, or work out how much paint you need to buy to cover the area of the walls of your home.
Hell, at the university I went to for undergrad, all of my peers in the physics program were required to take non-major courses in history or the arts or foreign languages, so that we could be well-rounded citizens of the world. But the art students could go their whole degree without taking a single math class and the university was just fine with it!
That can’t be good in a society where everything is based on numbers, from paychecks to logistics to computer code. I think everyone would be well served by having a passing familiarity with how the infrastructure of the world works. Otherwise, you’re always just taking somebody’s word for it, and the people selling you this stuff have every incentive to lie.
This isn’t even scratching the surface of the “why do we study any organism that isn’t human science funds are so wasted wtf” style of sheer science ignorance