Yes, my thinking is similar. Elementary school teachers often barely understand the math they are required to be teaching, and don’t have the fluidity needed to handle a more free-flowing discussion about a book that doesn’t conform to a specific curriculum. The whole system frequently retreats into drilling specific procedures that mean nothing to the teachers and students involved, even when the explicit stated goal is to help build understanding and problem solving skills. The idea that math classes even could include reading books is just not part of the conversation. Only English classes assign books to read—not history, not foreign languages, and definitely not science and math. Related: I had exactly one math teacher, in seventh grade, who assigned a term paper on any math topic of our choice. I got a 70, the lowest math grade I ever received in any year, and it was because, as he told me in his own words, he didn’t understand what I’d written and couldn’t follow it.
I will say, there are some English language books that deliberately incorporate math in ways that are both fun and educational, if you had a teacher able and willing to lead such discussions. There’s many such books by Ian Stewart. Alice in Wonderland would be a fair choice, and the kids probably already know the story. For middle or high schoolers especially, it doesn’t have to just be fiction, either. For the “When will we ever need this?” crowd, something like Nonplussed or Impossible?, both by Julian Haveil, could be a welcome and eye-opening change of pace.
It sounds like, on reflection, your previous post was less about reduction, and more about misapplying the idea of reduction in a way that ignores or elides map-territory distinctions, instead pretending our best known current map is actually reality. Would you agree with that?