Innumeracy

The title of the article was 'Why Do Americans Stink at Math?'
The rival chain was A&W (Do these even exist anymore)

In general, I believe that the reason people aren't up in arms and making a stir out of this situation is the simple fact is that math can be challenging. Many people, like myself, can struggle at times in math and its very frustrating. Instead of trying to learn the difficult concept or explore it further, many people will simply give up, saying that its just too hard. And the reason they believe this is okay is because you can live a successful life without the use of mathematics but its hard to live without being literate. That's not saying that math isn't important or that we shouldn't learn it, because it is and we should. Many people think they can live without it.

A question I commonly hear in math class is, "When will I ever use this?". It is true that many avenues that we explore in math might not have much practical use in our future careers but its the problem solving skills and the ability to tackle hard ideas that stay with us forever. I think if Americans realized this then our country and its citizens wouldn't be having these types of problems.