[wordpad25]

Advances math helps with developing logical thinking and in general makes you smarter.

But I agree we could achieve same results by teaching more practical skills. Maybe, programming (data structures and algorithms) over calculus?

[MajimasEyepatch]

Calculus is so important for understanding the natural world. Being able to reason about rates of change is a valuable skill.

That said, spending a bunch of time memorizing stupid identities to compute integrals is probably not the best way to teach introductory calculus.

[imtringued]

Do something crazy and teach kids to write their own QP solver. That will force them to learn quadratic functions, vector norms, solving linear equations using LU decomposition, dot products, vector matrix and matrix vector multiplication, convexity, Lagrangian multipliers, etc.

The quadratic programming solver can be used to calculate ordinary least squares for linear regression and controlling robot arms in real time or linear model predictive control.

[SamoyedFurFluff]

I would say data structure and algorithms are not more practical to actual literal children. Better off letting them cook/bake, where they have to work out ratios, temperatures, giving one third more or quartering other portions, etc etc. let them do scoring, figure out how to split 300g of chocolate between 5 friends and the like.