This trend of "studying what you like" is as cute as the dodo bird. Soon it will bring down the whole country as we lose ground to every other nation on earth. I am talking this as a father of a 4 year old who I dont believe will ever get the education he needs in high school to work his way through an engineering program if things dont change.

The way we teach math here is so wrong in so many ways. The bane of why we suck at math in practice imho

1)The concept of "show your work" for calculations

2)The use of calculators.

My wife who was raised overseas can compute most everything in her head instead of on paper. Long division, long multiplication, etc,etc,etc. I can't get beyond a couple of digits without being either too slow or too inaccurate. Given a sales tax of 7.75%, she can tell me exactly how much any amount is within a few seconds.