About the Mannion piece I linked to earlier, I mostly agree that teaching most people math beyond fifth grade or so is a net loss to society. Wastes a lot of time that could be put to far better use. And it is a myth that it makes you a better thinker.

Math education is in other words a huge deadweight loss to society, that ends up making many people (who are otherwise intellectually capable) just utterly despise school.

My partner who is actually good at math (hell, she took and passed a general relativity class) absolutely loathed nearly all of her math classes.

So many better and more useful things that could be taught instead, and evidence also shows that it doesn’t take years of education for most people to catch up (since most math education is just re-hashing the same thing year after year). Those who are truly interested could catch up in a year or so if they want to do something math-heavy later on.

For the rest, it is worse than useless — it is actively harmful.