Meanwhile, the rest of the world will go on teaching it and their students' academic performance will continue to trounce the US's. I am 100% confident that I

Meanwhile, the rest of the world will go on teaching it and their students' academic performance will continue to trounce the US's. I am 100% confident that I would not have gone into engineering if algebra had not been part of my compulsory education. And I'm very happy with the career I discovered for myself. Neither one of my parents were engineers. And I wasn't a particularly good student in middle or high school. Therefore, I doubt anyone in my family would have thought to enroll me in extra curricular math. I discovered that I was good at those things late in high school. So I see advice like this as worsening class divides and increasing the likelihood that you live the same life as your parents.