This is a consequence of refusing to acknowledge math as a required course. Teachers and schools loathe to fail a student--especially one who is actually displa

This is a consequence of refusing to acknowledge math as a required course. Teachers and schools loathe to fail a student--especially one who is actually displaying effort and is otherwise a good student. My high school had an elaborate system of ways for people to avoid doing math. Even though Algebra was technically required to graduate, there were enough loopholes and alternative classes that students could effectively skip learning actual math. Fail an exam? The teacher would give extra credit: presenting about a famous mathematician--certainly interesting work, but does not really show that the student actually understands the core math material. This is how you get incoming first-year undergrads who don't know how to reduce fractions even though their curriculum indicates they should have learned it multiple times over. They have managed to avoid jumping through the hoop so many times because we gave them a rope to skip instead.