Agreed. The book "A Mathematician's Lament" I found enlightening on this topic.

This coupled with a weird fixation on achieving a sufficiently "high" level of mathematics, typically without a strong justification for any non-grad-school-bound students. Reeks of gate-keeping. I've known multiple people who've failed to finish a degree solely because of math classes covering material that they'd almost certainly never have seen again their entire lives, even if they achieved a middling-successful career in their desired field.

If "thinking mathematically" is the actual, vital part of that education, for most students, I have some doubts that a classics-based approach is any worse than the modern kind. Maybe better, except for a small slice of students who will continue to engage with advanced mathematics after they finish undergrad and do need the modern version.

I know I'd prefer a population that understands how to read graphs, what rate of change means, can actually solve a word problem, etc. People are voting on complex topics like tax rates and I think you'd be amazed at how many people can not, and I mean not with a calculator or at all, calculate what 60% of 75 is.

So maybe it's not a bad thing that people graduate from College are required to take a few algebra and stats classes when they're ostensibly running the show at large corporations and in various levels of Government.

I used to TA an intro philosophy course designed for STEM types based on Aristotle’s Physics and etc., and lemme tell you the students ate that shit up.

Kinda had to gently remind them that the physics they knew wouldn’t help them with ontological problems like “what is an object?” but once they got over that hurdle everything was pretty much fine.