Before literacy became common, were there institutions in place to educate everyone in a population on a set of topics? (I do not know the historical answer to this question, but suspect not.)
I think the answer is 'yes' simply because the best way to educate everyone is to make them literate first. The institutions that taught children to read and write were always the same ones that taught them anything else.
Historically, there were educational environments that didn't teach literacy - like vocational training for various professions - but none of those were, or could be, universal.
This guy says that the problem is that high-school math education is structured to prepare people to learn calculus in their freshman year of college. But only a small minority of students ever takes calculus, and an even smaller minority ever uses it. And not many people ever make much use of pre-calc subjects like algebra, trig, or analytic geometry.
Instead, high-school math should be structured to prepare people to learn statistics. Probability and basic statistics, he argues, are not only more generally useful than calculus, they are also more fun.
I have to agree with him. What do the people here think?