What I'm claiming is that English teachers both succeed and fail at this every day. Of course, you can disagree. No one wants to tell kids their idea is wrong when the subject matter is somewhat subjective (like English or History) if they appear to be trying. Math has built in quality control because of the objectivity. It creates a constructive feedback loop.
I'm not from the US, I meant "we" as a whole. Obviously some places are better than others, but I think math education in 7-18 schools is better than physics, biology, history and most subjects. Obviously it's hard to compare.
Your point about algebra-calculus an interesting one. I've heard several time an interesting rule of thumb that to be a teacher you need to have studied about five years beyond the level you teach. I suspect that to be able to confidently use knowledge like maths knowledge, you need to have studied x number of years beyond. So, a person who never studied math past year 12, can confidently use maths learned around year 9-10 or somesuch.
In any case, I'm not claiming that we reading, writing, and arithmetic are all we should teach, just that we're relatively good at teaching these.
I'm not from the US, I meant "we" as a whole. Obviously some places are better than others, but I think math education in 7-18 schools is better than physics, biology, history and most subjects. Obviously it's hard to compare.
Your point about algebra-calculus an interesting one. I've heard several time an interesting rule of thumb that to be a teacher you need to have studied about five years beyond the level you teach. I suspect that to be able to confidently use knowledge like maths knowledge, you need to have studied x number of years beyond. So, a person who never studied math past year 12, can confidently use maths learned around year 9-10 or somesuch.
In any case, I'm not claiming that we reading, writing, and arithmetic are all we should teach, just that we're relatively good at teaching these.