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As a practicing research scientist and engineer I have always regarded math as language, not art. I don't really disagree with his premise but the only useful thing I learned in school was typing. Everything else was a rehash of what I had learned on my own. in other words I was bored to tears in school.

I never had a math teacher who understood math. It wasn't till after I left school and started doing actual work that math made sense. Then I devoured whatever I needed to know to solve the current problem. I have tried to teach individuals general techniques for problem solving and had some success.

As a math major (that worked as an engineer) I remember assigning an electrical engineer and a guy with a MS in Physics an engineering task. They came to me with a formula, unfortunately for them the variable they needed to find was in the middle of the equation.

Lucky for them that's basically all I did as a math major was manipulate equations, took the whole white board but I reworked their equation. The was when I realized the value of math.

But being kicked upstairs my interface with high order equations became nonexistent. When I open my Ordinary Differential Equations text, it is literally and figuratively all Greek to me.