But I'm not arguing that learning how to do math is useful for making decisions later in life (aside, obviously, from e.g. financial decisions that involve maki

But I'm not arguing that learning how to do math is useful for making decisions later in life (aside, obviously, from e.g. financial decisions that involve making calculations). I would argue that classes that study literature actually harm peoples' abilities to make decisions later in life. Letting people make pretend arguments without a testable standard of truth is a terrible idea. You can see people act in public today that do not care one bit about whether what they believe, or what they say, is true or not, and you can see them claim that there are "multiple perspectives" on matters that are, in fact, questions of fact. Some people are quite good at writing stuff in a way that gives them 2^n directions in which they might equivocate, should somebody argue with them. They are a product of this system.