G.V. Ramanathan - How much math do we really need?

And how much literature, and how much history, and how much music, and how much sport.<p>I'll never be a top flight athlete, why should I bother to exercise. I'll never perform music for others, why should I bother to learn to play. Answer: they enrich my life, they make me able to do things that I otherwise wouldn't think about, and would escape my notice entirely.<p>Similarly math helps me to think critically, and makes me less likely to be taken in by the blather and spin of the politicians.<p>If you want a populace that just accepts the "facts" and "statistics" ladelled to it, and which can be taken in repeatedly by con artists and tricksters, by all means stop once they can count. And why even both with that? Who needs to be able to count?

Rather than dig into the question of whether higher-level math (like calculus) is really good for the masses or not, I think it's pretty clear that there's still plenty of room for improvement in making sure that <i>basic</i> quantitative and critical reasoning skills are taught more broadly and substantially than they are, at present.