Ask HN: Why have schools done such a bad job in teaching Mathematics? - itsmefaz
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bediger4000
Because there's a bias towards so-called "practical" math - arithmetic and
accounting and figuring out things like price per unit. I think this started
because curriculum was highly biased towards "real American" farmers feeling
like they only needed enough arithmetic to keep from being ripped off by city-
slickers, and then got perpetuated by high schools needing to churn out
standardized factory workers, which meant that knowing how to measure things
and do fractions and decimals got imposed.

There's also a huge "tradition" component to US public schools. Parents for
generations have had cows when something changed. Look at the reaction to
doing some small bits of set theory in the "New Math" of the 60s/early 70s, or
the freakouts about not teaching phonics in the 80s, and the Core Curriculum
conspiracy theories of 10-15 years ago.

Making computers and software like Mathematica, MACSYMA, etc, and pocket
calculators and later smart phones turned the whole thing upside down.
Memorizing how to do arithmetic is actually detrimental to understanding, it
turns out, and knowledge of symbolic logic and algorithms is more important
than being able to add decimals and multiply fractions.

To summarize: US math education was entirely practical, the curriculum
dictated by either farming or industrial interests. Pocket calculators,
computers and smart phones have made that "practical emphasis" look especially
medieval because what used to be higher math, is now what is basic. This is
abetted by US citizens preferring tradition in curriculum over all else.

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itronitron
I actually think Math, as it is taught now in US public schools, is taught
better than any of the other topics. Why? Because there is a standard
progression from one year to the next and the supporting tools/software are
more refined than the related tools/software for Science, History, and
English.

~~~
yesenadam
(Australia here.) Maths was my favourite subject in high school mainly because
everything else was taught so badly - history (regurgitate names and dates,
for some reason mostly Greece, Rome, WWI), science (learnt how to be good at
faking experiments! I couldn't believe it), english (memorize and regurgitate
teacher's pet theories on set texts). Not to mention art and music which were
just atrocious. I absolutely loathed poetry classes until discovering a few
years later that I loved it. Maths is just harder to teach badly, I think -
less opinion-based.

Actually I did learn something of statistics in physics class - our teacher
said "Right!" and "Right-o!" incredibly often, and I & some friends made
tables and drew graphs of just how often, and various units and ways to
measure when a new record had been achieved.

But most people have a dislike for maths, maybe because it's been mostly
answering other peoples' exercise questions. Seems dry and uninteresting,
pointless. I'd been programming since I was about 11, so had uses for it all,
could test out the new ideas in graphics programs, and had questions of my own
to answer. It was something I was always playing around with. (So were music,
art, history, science, but that didn't make me like the way they were taught!)

~~~
itsmefaz
> so had uses for it all, could test out the new ideas in graphics programs,
> and had questions of my own to answer

That's a very interesting point you made!

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jimmyvalmer
Low prestige, low wages, hard subject. Is this not obvious? Situation in
Europe and Asia gradually converging to US's as wage gap between private and
public sectors widen.

~~~
non-entity
To be quite honest, I probably wouldn't have graduated in time if it wasn't
for math teacher who didn't care, and passed almost everyone. Looking back, it
probably was my weakest subject, and probably would have been my lowest grades
if I hadn't hated ELA classes too much to do the work.

Unfortunately now, I find my math ability to be extremely weak, which becomes
a problem as I take interest in things that require much higher level math
than I'm used to.

~~~
itsmefaz
I'm also in the same boat. However, I've started reading from elementary
mathematics and I enjoy it much more than what I used to.

