Thank you for this refreshingly concrete and provocative suggestion on how to make mathematics more relevant and interesting.

I appreciate your enthusiasm for embedding mathematics in real-world contexts. But note that the essence of mathematics is problem-solving, and often that means it is abstract and necessarily removed from tangible application. There must also be a place for problem solving as an end in itself. But I wholeheartedly endorse substituting the lame, implausible real-world contexts that fill today’s textbooks with examples that are relevant and thought provoking.

We should also recognise that mathematics does have unique characteristics as a subject of study (as any subject does). One such characteristic is the hierarchical nature of content. We should not ignore the dependency of some concepts on others; students will get the best out of your task if they have commanded understanding and fluency of foundational content.