In Oklahoma, the requirement usually is up to “algebra 2” - this is mostly domain and range, finding roots of polynomials, and logarithms.
IMHO, the world would be better if calculus was a required part of the high school curriculum. Like yeah, most people aren’t going to need the product rule in day to day life, but the fundamental ideas about rates of change seem like they’re something that everyone human deserves to be exposed to.
I don’t think the question is what level math to end on, but rather how math is taught. I teach psych statistics at University and the average student does the math parts mostly fine (it’s just algebra) but their critical thinking and application of the math is usually what is sorely lacking regardless of their ending math course. And in the real world where we do everything with computers, the application is 99% what matters.
I’ve had people in middle age who dropped out in 6th grade in Mexico do better than fresh-from-US-high school calculus experienced students, and that’s not even taking into account this more recent COVID-survivors generation that feels like they skipped a year of education. It’s very… grim.
Here, stochastics and statistics are the key student filters in psychology.
Yep, critical thinking enhances all other intellectual pursuits. It is so easy to fail at the critical thinking stage and go down a blind hole pursuing something absolutely nonsensical because you didn’t check your basic assumptions.
I would want kids to learn about the Monty Hall problem, do a little Bayesian analysis, etc. I think they could learn through trying to smuggle some lies into a paper and then peer reviewing each others papers and finding the flaws. Kids are way more creative than they are given credit for and they would find ways of sneaking things through we wouldn’t ever consider. Making it adversarial would prepare them for interacting with the huxters and frauds that make up a huge amount of modern life.