> It's treated as some kind of tournament to get into college
and
> But most people admit that they forgot all of their math immediately upon finishing school.
in those 2 quotes, you summarize the current issues with school mathematics. There is no real benefit in learning school math as most people will just use up to 6th/7th grade math in their daily work. Even professions that "do math" daily (like carpenters) have, most of the time, figured out ways to do it "quickly" without really doing math (see, for example, the diamonds on a measuring tape and how they are used to solve the Pythagorean theorem).
That leaves school math as "the great sorter" of students. Students that "can" take advanced math classes and use those as leverage in college admissions. To see this process in motion, look up parents' concerns with California's new math sequence and how those usually involve college readiness (as in, college admission advantage) over career readiness (as in, calculus II is needed for whatever profession my kid will do after high school).