Several years ago...I lived in Germany and was watching this TV show where businesses were inviting seventeen year-old kids out for job interviews. These all related simple jobs in bakeries, groceries, and beverage shops.
The bosses all had this ten question test that they used on the kids that showed up. They were questions like....if you only had half of three hours to do a job...how many minutes did this add up to? Nine of ten kids could not answer the question. One kid sat there for at least three minutes...finally converting the hours into minutes and coming to the answer of 120 minutes (wrong, I know).
So the bosses all turned to the reporter doing the piece, and said....these are all kids finishing up years in school, and ought to be able to do simple math. The simple truth was that they just couldn’t think and operate with common problems and math. If you had just said what was 180 minus 90...they’d all answer that quickly. They weren’t prepared for the real world.
I suspect that American educators are discovering the same thing. The answer here...is to start every kid by the third grade....doing business math applications on a routine basis. Sprinkle in geometric situations, and various other calculations. Math alone, is not enough....you need to think and use it in everyday life.
That was my first thought, too. Students are always asking, “When am I ever going to need to know this?” Math should be taught using real world applications.
Then again, math textbooks already include word problems - for real-life situations. Maybe the real reason is that students are held to standards that are too low.