Nobody needs fancy research to tell them that math is the most detested subject by the American public at large. Even if you’re a fan (I am), it’s impossible not to acknowledge everyone else’s hatred of it. But if you needed proof, 4 out of 10 American adults said they hated math when they were in school, making it twice as hated as any other subject.

This isn’t just some fun anecdote. It’s a really serious problem considering we aren’t churning out enough high quality engineers to stay competitive with the rest of the world. Fortune had a great article recently on the ability of Americans to compete:

We’re not building human capital the way we used to. Our primary and secondary schools are falling behind the rest of the world’s. Our universities are still excellent, but the foreign students who come to them are increasingly taking their educations back home. As other nations multiply their science and engineering graduates—building the foundation for economic progress—ours are declining, in part because those fields are seen as nerdish and simply uncool. And our culture prizes cool.

…

Turning theory into reality is the third factor: Low-cost countries—not just China and India but also Mexico, Malaysia, Brazil, and others—are turning out large numbers of well-educated young people fully qualified to work in an information-based economy. China will produce about 3.3 million college graduates this year, India 3.1 million (all of them English-speaking), the U.S. just 1.3 million. In engineering, China’s graduates will number over 600,000, India’s 350,000, America’s only about 70,000.

Even considering that India and China have 3 or 4 times the population of the U.S., we’re still behind! Consider too that these countries haven’t even fully industrialized yet. If this is where they are today, you can bet your ass they’ll be the world’s research leaders very soon.

We need to get over this fear of math and the general disdain America has for education. It should be cool to learn, damn it. It helps your paycheck and it helps your country. Our competitiveness depends on it.