This is sad. Really sad. My personal opinion is that Americans just dislike academic matters so much that they are incapable of forming a coherent solution for their children's schooling.

Let me tell you some personal anecdotes. I moved to Minnesota during my High school senior year from Vietnam. It sucked: I couldn't hold on to conversations, and people couldn't understand my pronunciation; so I was bored and very lonely. You know what I do during my lunch time? Trying to re-prove Fermat's Last Theorem. Is there any "real world" application of that? Well, there may be, but I don't care. It was fun.

You know how people listen to (and rock to) puke music on buses? I rode bus a lot during my college years, and spent that time wreaking my brain to work on various NP complete problems (my favorite is the man-woman-dog matching :D). Do I know it is beyond my capacity? Yes. Do I care about any real world problem of it? No. Why did I do it then? It's fun. It killed time. I still do this from time to time during meetings at work.

When you think about it, most of math, or most of the academia for that matter, is not readily applicable. True, people use calculus to build Hoover Dam, but the effect of that information on whether or not a student likes math is equivalent of a political speech to a person political orientation: either you already like it (math/Obama) and cheer for it, or you already hate it (math/Obama) and boo/ignore it. These things, by itself, can't change a person's opinion regarding the big picture.

You know why I like doing math in my free time? Because I have done a whole load of it. Vietnamese High School graduates are required to learn around sophomore math level in American college (and I fully expect most other East Asian systems to be the same). This explains neatly why Asian students are "smart." They freaking know the things already. Furthermore, the learning of math there involved an absurd amount of drill (compared to American high schools). Oh, calculators are banned until high school, and graphing calculators are banned. Period.

Now, should that not make me abhor math? I mean, slaving myself so much time over such stupid and abstract matter must bore me to death, right? Actually, the opposite happened. It's like taste bud. You rebuild your taste bud every so often, so if you have been eating a whole load of broccoli lately, you will start to like broccoli. Yeah, after the first few days, you can't even digest to crap. However, after a few months, you can't digest without broccoli. Humans are adaptable. Do a lot of math, and you will like it.

This also speaks of the problem with calculators and computers. The problem is no so much that they dump down math. The problem is that they alienate the students from math. When you do math, all of it, the result is made of your sweat. It may be wrong, but it's yours. It may be stupid and winded and long and whatnots, but it's yours. It's personal. I remember once, during 5th grade (yes, elementary school), there was this problem that I just could not solve, and we were kicked out of class for lunch break. Walking out, I cling to the teacher and cried out of frustration. The same frustration that keeps me up at nights when some stupid bugs could not be fixed. Must be the same frustration that all artisans experience at challenges. It's the indication of the bond that I have with my work, MY math, and it necessitates the toil, the slaving, the mind-numbing work of calculation.

I hope you see my point: there is no elevator to interest in math. Math lovers must have toiled and slaved over stupid calculation over and over, until a point that they could actually produce the trace of math working, just like the zone in programming or any other art. That trace, that focus, that absorption builds the love for math.

Of course, this means that the students must fist cross the initial barrier of math, just like the first few days of broccoli eating. In Asian cultures, academia is a point of pride. Parents take enormous pride in their children's academia success. Schools take enormous pride in their students' academia achievements. Think about football in American high schools. It's something similar. Study well, perform well in competition, and a student will enjoy numerous privileges and honors that is just unattainable through any other mean. The whole culture rates academia above any other activities, and use that as the measure for potential success. Playing sport well will earn praise, but it is understood to be temporary, fast passing. Studying well, and people will talk about how you will got to such and such colleges, and will become such and such person in the future. It's just different.

Back to problem of American math schooling. Here is my prescription: just make the damn students do it. Require them to work on math. Forget about the whole, um, personality and uniqueness and whatnots. You know where these things are from? The toil of work (for students, that's studying) builds personality, values, and one's importance and uniqueness. You know where self esteem is from? It's from holding a piece of paper on which a problem has been solved and solution has been neatly presented; it's from the overcoming of frustration and challenges that the problem presents. Artisans take pride and esteem in their works. Students take pride and esteem in their tests and homework (except when you tell them that the football players will get the praise, the money, and the sex, and only these 3 things matter). Stop worrying about overworking them. Actually, overwork them to the ground. Leave them no energy and time to experiment with drugs and sex and alcohol.

It takes challenges and toil to make a person. Stop taking these things away from the youngsters!