And how much literature, and how much history, and how much music, and how much sport.
I'll never be a top flight athlete, why should I bother to exercise. I'll never perform music for others, why should I bother to learn to play. Answer: they enrich my life, they make me able to do things that I otherwise wouldn't think about, and would escape my notice entirely.
Similarly math helps me to think critically, and makes me less likely to be taken in by the blather and spin of the politicians.
If you want a populace that just accepts the "facts" and "statistics" ladelled to it, and which can be taken in repeatedly by con artists and tricksters, by all means stop once they can count. And why even both with that? Who needs to be able to count?
I'd agree with your thinking - beyond practical uses and the practical need for a functional democracy to have thinking citizens, knowledge enriches human life.
What was a bit surprising to me was how contrarian the author was willing to be publicly. Unless he's just messing with his colleagues and readers, and perpetuating the status quo where the minority who can use math generally make a better living than those who can't.
Rather than dig into the question of whether higher-level math (like calculus) is really good for the masses or not, I think it's pretty clear that there's still plenty of room for improvement in making sure that basic quantitative and critical reasoning skills are taught more broadly and substantially than they are, at present.
I'll never be a top flight athlete, why should I bother to exercise. I'll never perform music for others, why should I bother to learn to play. Answer: they enrich my life, they make me able to do things that I otherwise wouldn't think about, and would escape my notice entirely.
Similarly math helps me to think critically, and makes me less likely to be taken in by the blather and spin of the politicians.
If you want a populace that just accepts the "facts" and "statistics" ladelled to it, and which can be taken in repeatedly by con artists and tricksters, by all means stop once they can count. And why even both with that? Who needs to be able to count?