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Many moons ago mathematics was actually taught as not just performing acrobatics with numbers, but as a preliminary "kindegarten" of sorts for learning how to take principles and ideas and apply them. In other words, kinda like a limited applied logic that you can "see". It's purpose was to train the mind to get used to following the train of a thought in a thorough way and even to become more "flexible" in ways so it would be grounded when approaching more involved subjects like philosophy or rhetoric or ethics or what not.
Nowadays mathematics is often taught as playing around with numbers devoid of a whole, practical organic context, and thus, well, unsurprisingly to some people it feels dry and tedious and, like erneiz hyde said "what has learning calculus got to do with real life" questions come to the surface reeaaallllyyyyy fast.
Not that learning how to use numbers is wrong, of course. That aspect of mathematics is very useful and needed and valued and all that, and for "real life" too, of course. But whether or no that limited aspect of the entire... err... intellectual discipline should be the main emotional emphasis or mental presupposition behind how it is commonly presented is an entirely different issue.
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