What would the future look like for children who were taught mathematics until 12th grade instead of the standard curriculum?

Now, I understand that this strategy might not be the most effective if everybody does it, but I am rather confident that if some small body of people did, it would have immense benefits for them. In fact, even if everyone did it, it would still have a net positive effect I think. I am biased because I play a lot of games and do quite a bit of programming. The biggest bottleneck in my life is insufficient understanding of math. But this also makes me notice people around me who could live their own lives much better if they had spent more time with math...and there is A LOT of people in this bucket.

The reason why I was thinking about this, is because my life would be no different or biased towards better if I had done so. But I am too biased to understand/think of the pitfalls.

There is a lot of bloatware classes at school like history, literature, art, art history(jea, I spent 2 years learning about art history 11,12th grade, what is that about. Clearly it must be something most future employers put as a requirement on job offers), foreign languages, woodwork, PE and countless others.

To take chemistry or physics classes you need a very solid base in math, and many students don't, so they are essentially wasting their time. The basics concepts are not something you need to study, you can just show a few hour documentary and boom done. People are very good at remembering concepts. The hard bit is understanding how things work in as much detail as possible and that is where people struggle because for that you actually need to know math like your first language. Otherwise I suggest your time is better spent learning something else or getting good at the basics instead of wasting your time learning something that is out of your scope at the moment.

I take a lot of shit suggesting that in our modern society those people with only math background might actually have a big advantage. I know it is an extreme example but it is just a thought experiment. People have hobbies and learn stuff outside of the system anyway and the best realize that is what they have to do anyway to achieve competitive advantage.

Simply put, if I apply for a job and I mention that I spent 10 years learning history at school, it is not really getting me closer to getting hired.(I understand there are exceptions, but I suggest those jobs require bachelor or master level instead of the basic crap you stuff your head with in high school) However, if I had reverted that time towards doing my math homework, I can guarantee that my employability would be no doubt higher with added bonus of higher pay too. If this would be true for me, I suggest that it might be true universally.

Submitted September 24, 2020 at 07:09AM by SuperTuperDude https://ift.tt/3iYUSJX