On the other hand, there’s no reason to cram huge amounts of this stuff into a single semester, or to push so far beyond the limits of even the less than half of initial enrollees who stayed in the course that the class average is 56%. Our society does NOT need tunnel-visioned humanoid robots building our nuclear power plants, space craft, and military technology, and calculating the structural soundness of our skyscrapers, and getting things right 56% of the time.
Many students who are pushing themselves like this have no lives outside their schoolwork, couldn’t care less who the next President is, and wouldn’t dream of taking a day off from studying to help out at a church or community group. Some even become dangerously unstable since they have no perspective on anything and keep themselves extremely stressed all the time.
I'm convinced that if only they had allowed me to take business math, "life skills" math, practical application math, I would have loved it.