Math Educations: who needs it, how much and when?

[Nihilist Virus]

True confessions: I teach this stuff.  I enjoy the subject.  I like people .. including young ones.  I've always said I like teaching math because it is the easiest subject in which to reach clarity and test for validity.  I've even said I am covertly teaching critical thinking.  But I sometimes wonder about the level of specificity of what is taught.

That's where my question comes from.  Teaching middle school I'm charged with teaching kids what seems to many of them very complex and esoteric.  So, for me, I sometimes wonder .. am I making everyone practice piano 2 hours a day just so those few who go on to become virtuosos will have received a proper start?

I was just looking at youtube videos of people complaining about the common core.  (I start teaching that in a month so my jury is out.)  Then I came to this TED talk in which someone with my job asks and offers an answer to my question.  Thoughts?

http://youtu.be/xyowJZxrtbg

Not sure if I could possibly disagree with that guy more. He's acting like engineers are the only ones that need math. There's also this thing called statistics.

Want to become a nurse? You need to know stats. Want to become an accountant? Need to know probability and stats.

I am a math tutor. I once tutored a fireman who needed to pass a math class because he wanted to advance through the ranks and needed to be able to compile reports for his boss.

Also, the other three core subjects in high school are history, English, and science. If he wants to act like everyone is working a forklift for a living, then they don't need to know much about any of those three. The very little they need to know about science for their job won't be taught to them in a generalized high school science class and can be provided in their training quite easily.

Essentially his argument boils down to something like, "What's the danger in believing in a flat earth? I mean, less than 0.1% of the population actually needs to deal with the issues that a spherical earth presents that would not be present in a flat earth model. Therefore it's perfectly fine if the population generally believes in a flat earth."

Now I know he didn't say that, but he's saying that ignorance of an entire discipline is perfectly fine if the individual has no use for it. I, personally, believe that the population needs to be educated if we're going to move into the future.