Most people never use their math education higher than arithmetic. I don't see the point of teaching people math skills that they almost certainly will never use.
I'm not quite sure I agree that high school math is focused towards preparing people for calculus as opposed to statistics. All either one of them requires is a basic understanding of algebra. However, I would agree that mathematically competent people should be encouraged more to take statistics (particularly Baysian statistics).
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?