Yeah, that'll fix it. We could just stop using chlorine, but that'd be an inconvenience to chlorine producers. Nah, let's just dump some plastic balls in which block the sunlight, which kills the plants, which kills the fish, keeps birds from wanting anything to do with the place, ultimately reducing our food supplies even further and driving up prices, likely not helping the original problem in the least, oh and then there's the cleanup and the fact that plastic balls don't biodegrade without 'encouragement' from Modern Science... damn dirty apes.
Actually, and especially when you were a gen-Xer living in the suburbs it was because of two things: math teachers, the material they 'taught' from, and the endless homework were more boring than watching television, and then there's not much else to do in that situation than watch television and play some of the most mind-numbing video games ever invented. Applications for basic arithmetic? Sure, there were a few, but that was all. After that there wasn't much hope. A few bright kids actually got somewhere with math, but not many and certainly not as many as there should have been.
Less materialistic places, such as small towns and third-world countries could make math an exciting thing, and that's the important thing: if it's exciting, then the children will soak it up and make use of it. But cultural image? Bullshit.
No verification of what it really is.. could just as easily be sandy or muddy water spewing from a busted main. And if it were a sand boil I'd love to know what was causing it, right?
Less materialistic places, such as small towns and third-world countries could make math an exciting thing, and that's the important thing: if it's exciting, then the children will soak it up and make use of it. But cultural image? Bullshit.