> Then why do I frequently get confronted by the religion of "inherent truth in math" and we keep teaching our children math made overly convoluted and unintuit

> Then why do I frequently get confronted by the religion of "inherent truth in math" and we keep teaching our children math made overly convoluted and unintuitive by the "rigorous" crowd? Pretending that this is only a minority is not helpful in quashing the damage done by magical thinking in mathematics. Are you able to expand on this point? In my experience I have not heard of children learning rigorous mathematics. Grade school kids learn arithmetic. High school kids learn some calculus and probability (at most). This curriculum is practical for those going to uni or a technical trade. (although the way it's taught is critical to be of any use. If I were a science teacher my class would just build arduino projects all day!) Your reference to magical thinking seems to be the opposite of what I would consider rigour... I would associate magical thinking with an economist or engineer building a sprawling quantitative risk model and then justifying billion dollar decisions with it. Later realising a small logical error has invalidated their conclusion or that they have overfit their data etc. (Just for example...)