LogFAQs > #967369135

That's because math past basic algebra (that is, the concept of being able to plug numbers into a formula and some basic equation manipulation, with nothing past that) really doesn't get used in the real world. Pretty much all of it is taught "just in case" you end up in a field that uses it and for which that foundation will be helpful. Math is in a bit of a tricky position compared to other sciences in that it's something that you really need to practice to be good enough at it to use it professionally, so you can't just put off teaching higher-level material until the student actually needs it and expect them to be able to cram then, but there's still a lot of relatively advanced math taught non-optionally that could easily be shifted to later classes that are optional in favour of using that time for more universally useful information like broad scientific literacy and skills for running a household.

This is also why the "why are you teaching our kids about sex instead of trigonometry?" argument against sex ed is particularly stupid. Sex ed is pretty much universally applicable. Almost every student will end up having sex at some point in their lives and benefiting from learning how to do so safely, and while some will figure it out without needing to rely on school, that's no less true of sex than of any other subject. Significantly fewer students will ever need to recite cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse, so forcing everyone to learn that (and be graded on and potentially failed because of it) makes significantly less sense, and Pythagoras (along with SOH-CAH-TOA) is probably the highest-level trig/geometry concept that can actually be useful for most people (and even then, you can often just take the measurement directly instead of having to calculate anything).