It is 100% the fault of educators. Actual mathematicians have derided the abysmal state of math education for literal decades. But they don’t get to decide how we “educate” children. US educators unabashedly focus exclusively on testing for funding. They don’t give a rats ass if you know the simplest amount of trivial math—they do really really care if you pass a bizarrely arbitrary arithmetic test though. Why do think those mini-viral bullshit PEMDAS/BEMDAS memes track on Reddit. It’s deranged math students that think an order of operations is actually used in real math (real shock: they aren’t, mathematics doesn’t have an order of operations).