It's also pointing out some of the inadequacies of the school system here in America. I vaguely recollect working on prime factorization in high school, but it was all busy work - we never learned the significance of prime factors, or anything about mathematical theory, for that reason. Sure, we were all taught a lot of "advanced" stuff, like linear algebra, complex numbers, the Fibonacci Sequence, the Golden Ratio, but none of it was ever explained, or even really used for practical applications. It's like what I'm learning with programming now: you can't just learn an algorithm, you have to learn how it works, or else you'll only be able to apply it in a very narrow scope.

I've encountered linear algebra in my programming already. It forms the basis of the Bresenham Line Algorithm, which is central to graphics. The Golden Ratio turns out to be vital to art and aesthetics in general. Prime factors are the basic building blocks of all other numbers. So, to ask an open question, why don't American math classes explain anything about the actual theory behind mathematics before college (where explanations are still few)? Is it just another layer of control?