I have 2 kids who are in college now. The beauty of math that inspired me to study math (as an undergrad math major) was treated as an aside in K-12 math, and has now been replaced with Grind. I learned to love math thanks to just the enthusiasm of my teachers, and stuff that I did outside of class. Both of my kids got great math scores, good enough to skip college math altogether, which one of them has done.

Today, kids need to be told: Math is nothing like what you learned in high school.

I think K-12 math should be divided into 4 quadrants, taught in a soft of spiral:

1. Arithmetic (symbol manipulation, through algebra and calculus) 2. Computation (numeric and symbolic) 3. Learning from data 4. Theory (sets, proofs, etc.)

Some of these things could be blended with the science curriculum.