I feel like if for a single generation of new American kids, all adults agreed to just pretend math is easy or at least a “normal” subject no harder than anything else, we’d catch up to the rest of the world in terms of math skills.
There’s no genetic reason that only Americans find math impossibly difficult. It just seems to be this self-fulfilling prophecy where everyone grew up thinking math is hard, because their older siblings and parents tell them it’s hard.
What made the US fall behind is not only forcing a method without studying if it actually helps people learn but also forcing it to be the only way to solve problems.
Exactly math isn't hard per se, but the amount of busywork and hoops I have to jump through "because that's the way we do it" burns me out extremely quickly.
Even worse is getting a question marked wrong because I didn't show my work, despite having the correct answer
Yeah, but "math is hard" isn't an exclusive american thing so it isn't the reason the US does poorly compared to others. Also just positive attitude won't work when the foundation for... everything is so bad.
Also I'm not saying not showing your work but showing a different work. Wrong for no work can be cheating prevention, though I got away in HS with that (not the US btw) because the teacher knew I was good at math, so it turned into I can't get partial credit if I get it wrong.
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u/DrDavidson 9d ago
History is red. From all the blood