I don't think it's correct to generalize this for most of the curriculum. Most people do learn some math skills. Many kids learn more than the basics. Obviousl

I don't think it's correct to generalize this for most of the curriculum. Most people do learn some math skills. Many kids learn more than the basics. Obviously experiences vary. Yes, there are a lot of out-of-classroom factors. I think second language learning is a more extreme case though. Many language programs seem to produce very little. Math doesn't have that kind of variance. If kids' math skills are years behind another school system's... that gets noticed and acted on. If a language program produces almost no language skills, it tends to just be accepted.