[vundercind]

Ask the folks who set the math curriculum. If it were up to me nearly all math in school would be application-first and exceptions would be carved off into separate classes, presented very differently, and mostly not required.

[samaltmanfried]

Do you think high school students are qualified to decide for themselves whether they'll need math later in life? I never imagined having the kind of career I ended up with. I always thought I'd work as a writer. I ended up as a software engineer.

[vundercind]

No, but I think we could make math more useful and less unpleasant for most students by focusing on applications with just a little time for proofs or whatever in case that really piques some student’s interest. I doubt this would discourage many kids who’ll go on to become math majors, and it’d serve everyone else much better. You could still cover a lot of the same stuff.

That’s my guess, anyway.