The problem being that the candidates have to motivated and available ie In the Navy.
This is the problem - as the availability is very, very low for people wanting to come through the "ranks"
I think we not only need apprentices in the trades, but also in business to teach new employees to be a good and ethical worker and supervisor.
This is a problem these days too, as school teaches a lot of theory - but speaks very little about personality and how to use your own. Culture disconnects us so that we think our personality doesn't matter. We witness it on Hive all the time.
Math is one of those keystone skills that has a cluster around it. Even the basics as a child (cutting up a pizza mentally for fractions) has a multitude of skill areas that cross into other skill areas. Without those skill bridges, a person is quite useless.
Yeah. I really do worry about 'foundational skills' that are being discarded. I do not have the imagination to ponder life without math skills.
I check my gas mileage on every tank I run through my motorcycle (the car too for that matter). It gives me a working benchmark that I can use to assess how the bike is actually running. What do you do without it? Trust the fricking on board computer?