We Aren't As Smart As We Seem

I know a lot of people in retail stores in my home town because I have worked in retail in the past. I was in a store over the weekend and while paying I overheard a conversation between a cashier and a customer.The customer had given the cashier some cash and some change and the cashier had no idea how much to give them back. Maybe you have been in line and this has happened to you. 

Then I remembered being where that young cashier was and thinking to myself how it blew my mind as well. Many of these kids are straight A students and school and are great at math, so why can they not count back change to a customer?

The reason is that they spend so much time in schools teaching these complex forms of algebra that they neglect to teach fundamentals. I remember as a student being able to use the quadratic equation but when it came to nickles and dimes I was lost. It seems as though the things most practical to life are completely ignored in educational systems. So we are going to have a bunch of math experts running around that have no concept of something as simple as handling change. 

We really need to get back to teaching our kids fundamentals and stop focusing so much on the things we will never use. I think being well rounded is important and learning complex things is great but when simple tasks become mind blowing we need to fix things. We are turning into a world of very intelligent idiots and we can fix this problem by teaching fundamentals first then complex things later.