Language and mathematics are the mother tongues of our rational selves' --that is, of the human race--and no student should be permitted to be speechless in either tongue, whatever value she sets upon her special gifts, and however sure she may be at sixteen or eighteen that she knows the uses to which her mind will eventually be put. This would be like amputating her left hand because she did not seem to be ambidextrous. It is crippling to be illiterate in either, and the natural curriculum does not choose between them. They are two ways in which the student will have to express herself; they are two ways in which the truth gets known.
Mark Van Doren
Liberal Education
(Beacon Press, 1959)