Perhaps because it is genuinely less important on the pyramid of human skills. Reading, language comprehension, and critical thinking are more universally needed than, say, matrix multiplication or integrals.
2. I may be biased, but I believe math is distilled critical thinking. The difficulty is teaching math critical-thinking-first as opposed to test-first.
I actually think this is likely not true.
If you were to take an 18 year old who can't read, and another one who can't do addition, which do you think is less employable?
There's a lot of jobs one can do without any math. Almost none one can do without any reading.
There's more to it than all this of course, but I think literacy is the clear winner compared to numeracy.
The person who can't read can be a traffic guard, server (with the right cash register), bricklayer, or any of a number of jobs. However, all of those people need to know that they worked X hours @ $15/hour and should be paid 15X. Otherwise they will never know if they were ripped off or be able to plan for the future.
That said, addition is a very low bar--I cannot think of a single job that would not require at least basic addition.
Based on current wisdom. Current wisdom has a spotty track record though. It was once an obvious truth that reading was only for a select group. Universal literacy would have been as absurd back then as the notion of universal math literacy is now. Which is depressing, because one would hope that at least this historical analogy, and it’s implications, had occurred to more people.
A few other, major issues:
* Math has a severe stigma. How many people do you know would readily confess "I'm just not good at reading," almost as a badge of pride? This is common with math.
* Most teachers don't have a strong math foundation. They are not acquainted with some of the foundational ideas that can really enhance teaching and learning math. In some cases, teachers who don't like math will perpetuate the above issue.
* There is little incentive for those strong in math to become teachers. Why go teach introductory math when you can become a software developer and make 4x the salary, with less stress to boot?
I'd look to remedies like paying teachers better, improving their workload, and even revising math curriculums to focus on concepts over testing before jettisoning a whole field like this article advocates.