Failing to understand compound interest leads to a lifetime of poor financial management.

Compound interest can be taught in about 5 minutes.

If only we had ideal conditions...

where do we draw the line what's "basic"?

Being able to take an arbitrary word problem and turn it into an algebraic equation (or series of equations) and be able to solve it. That a huge percentage of kids graduate high school being unable to do that means several people (mostly parents but likely the school system too) failed them.

that hat is quite a bit higher than the basic algebra to just solve given equations. that's why I was asking. I think there are vastly different views on what's "basic".

wrt who has failed on them iirc countries like Finland figured how to largely lift the dependency from home, family, parents.

"Teacher! Will we ever use any of this algebra?"

"You won't, but one of the smart kids might." [1]

Dumb kids can turn into smart kids, so they need math too.

[1] https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/why-i-couldn39t-be-a-math-...

Everybody needs a certain base of math to a certain age so that we can find the students that want to go on with math and so that they are able to. Society needs that.

Along the way, everybody has a chance to get a feel for math in the world, which I would say is on par with a certain base in the humanities; we should strive for every citizen to have it, even if it’s not strictly needed for survival in the job market.

I currently think finance and statistics, so people don't get fooled so easily. Both require algebra as a foundation.

Trigonometry, calculus, vectors, complex numbers, group theory, matrices? Fun, but not something I expect to be used often enough to justify making it mandatory part of everyone's education.