This is why America's obsession with trying to boost math scores is possibly a waste of time and money. No amount of math literacy will ever approach anything like this. Those who are gifted and motivated enough will learn the material anyway and there are enough professors who can teach it.

People who are professionals are so way far above and beyond anything done by non-professionals. It's not like that with reading or writing, in which knowing how to read means you can in theory appreciate almost any book.

I think more emphasis should be on learning the basics, which enough kids find hard enough to do. No reason to try to make high schoolers learn algebra 1 & 2.