I hated maths and wound up with an Economics major and a job where an above average grasp of stats is greatly beneficial. Go figure. I suspect the proportion of adults for whom some form of mathematics assumes at least some basic importance in adulthood vastly exceeds the proportion of kids that would voluntarily turn off MTV to do arithmetic puzzles.
Put another way, if you drew a Venn diagram of "stuff that would be useful for adulthood" and "stuff most kids would study until they were at least adequately skilled entirely of their own volition", the circles would barely overlap.
Sure, this doesn't apply to the average Hacker News reading autodidact, but one of the first things you learn in statistics is not to make judgements based on outliers.
Nicely said. An argument could be made that if kids learn to study on their own they'll be motivated as adults to catch up on the stuff they weren't interested in as kids. However, as a parent I feel at least partially responsible for ensuring my kids spend their time in a useful way.
Put another way, if you drew a Venn diagram of "stuff that would be useful for adulthood" and "stuff most kids would study until they were at least adequately skilled entirely of their own volition", the circles would barely overlap.
I think the second statement applies perfectly well to most adults. Our whole system is based on having people maximally specialize into their element of greatest comparative advantage, to the exclusion of most of what we regard as maturity, wisdom, and humanity.
Put another way, if you drew a Venn diagram of "stuff that would be useful for adulthood" and "stuff most kids would study until they were at least adequately skilled entirely of their own volition", the circles would barely overlap.
Sure, this doesn't apply to the average Hacker News reading autodidact, but one of the first things you learn in statistics is not to make judgements based on outliers.