50 years ago, high school math at most schools ended with trigonometry. Today a large fraction of college bound seniors have taken calculus, and STEM students

50 years ago, high school math at most schools ended with trigonometry. Today a large fraction of college bound seniors have taken calculus, and STEM students have taken two years of calculus. And yet, 50 years ago there were lots of math-phobic kids who, today, are expected to perform at some modest level (50 years ago, they stopped with algebra I). It is true that 50 years ago a fraction of kids were learning just fine, but more recently the goal has been to make that fraction larger, in a society that actively devalues learning.