Ah, but that brings us to what I took as the main give-away the post: the fundamental mistake is talking about mathematical aptitude in terms of a gift that one

Ah, but that brings us to what I took as the main give-away the post: the fundamental mistake is talking about mathematical aptitude in terms of a gift that one either has or has not, because it hurts the motivation of everyone who is not immediately recognizable as ranking on the most rightmost tail end of the spectrum when they start their formal schooling. And that group still includes many people who would benefit from further improvement of their mathematical skill. Consider the famous story about Gauss, baffling his teacher by coming up with a formula for 1+2+...+n [1]. Or Kolmogorov who reportedly started his own 'journal' at age of 5. Or Terence Tao, who already had his M.Sc. at the age of 16 and was a professor by 24 [2]. Sure, such people exist and they can be spotted early. But the humanity needs also regular engineers and statisticians and other math-capable people, especially in non-obvious fields such as journalism. [1] http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/gausss-day-of-reckoning http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/gausss-day-of-re... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao#Childhood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao#Childhood