I think also that fundamentally if you are rote learning and never really "Got" the math, then it probably will be completely useless to you down the track. If what you learned was conceptual thinking and HOW to learn, then you probably won't even notice whether you are using what you learned from those math classes. For those of us for whom learning the concepts came easily we also learned how to learn (or already knew), it wasn't a bitter and painful experience from which we got no apparent value.
I don't know that I have ever directly applied any of my high school math. I can't even remember exactly what I learned, given we just call ALL math "Math 1 and Math 2" here I can't look back and say "Yep, studied algebra, trig, and geometry". Actually I just confirmed with DH and we both would have done algebra, trig, geometry, calculus. The only thing I can clearly remember is probability - because I couldn't do it.
20+ years later I probably use underlying principles of all that math regularly enough, particularly algebra. But the only thing I remember clearly is that I never mastered probability - and "I have never needed it anyway".
I will need to read a text book when it's time to help my kids with highschool math, but I have no doubt that I will be able to remember it all with some prompting. Except probability :-). Where as I am guessing the adults that are complaining they never used that math probably never understood it that well in the first place and will not be able to quickly and easily re-learn it to go through it with their kids. Someone else is going to have to teach my kids probability, and maybe teach me while they are at it.
