Math is incredibly useful; probably everyone here knows that. But it's actually fine that most people don't use it.
What we really need is for every student to realize why math is useful -- so that if they want to, they can go learn it so that they can make some kind of technological contribution to the world. The fact is, you need to be good at math to make some new fundamental breakthroughs in technology. Those breakthroughs benefit everyone, even those who don't know any math at all. But you won't really get why that's the case until you know enough about sines and cosines to make sense of modern technological development.
The real issue is that we just teach the math, hoping that students will understand on their own that it's fundamental.
What we should do instead is try to instill that sense of wonder about the world that inspires people to study math. We don't need every person to know calculus, we just need everyone to understand why calculus is useful -- then they can be inspired to go further. Educators say that they're trying to do this, but I'm sorry "how many meters of fence does Farmer Bob need to keep the sheep inside the pen" is not inspiration -- it's drivel, no better than "find the perimeter given a=5, b=6."
If every person understood why math is so useful, we would have many more people who are motivated to work on improving the state of things.
What we really need is for every student to realize why math is useful -- so that if they want to, they can go learn it so that they can make some kind of technological contribution to the world. The fact is, you need to be good at math to make some new fundamental breakthroughs in technology. Those breakthroughs benefit everyone, even those who don't know any math at all. But you won't really get why that's the case until you know enough about sines and cosines to make sense of modern technological development.
The real issue is that we just teach the math, hoping that students will understand on their own that it's fundamental.
What we should do instead is try to instill that sense of wonder about the world that inspires people to study math. We don't need every person to know calculus, we just need everyone to understand why calculus is useful -- then they can be inspired to go further. Educators say that they're trying to do this, but I'm sorry "how many meters of fence does Farmer Bob need to keep the sheep inside the pen" is not inspiration -- it's drivel, no better than "find the perimeter given a=5, b=6."
If every person understood why math is so useful, we would have many more people who are motivated to work on improving the state of things.