I used to LOVE math. In 6th grade, I would tutor other kids on the ride home - I took the front seat in the bus, and kids would sit next to me in turn, and ask me to explain what we talked about in class that day, or ask me to help them understand why A could equal C.
I got to Jr. High - OUCH. I’m dyslexic, so teh NUMBERS were always hard for me (is that 78 or 87?), but I adored the concepts (and give me a word problem any day!). Except they kept throwing NUMBERS at me. Fear of math started inching in… (teachers apparently LOVED to humiliate me by asking me to do calculations out loud). Changed school systems, and got good teachers again… LOVED algebra, LOVED geometry, wanted to do calc. Then got a sucky sucky sucky calc teacher. The guy didn’t teach, he told us to read the book, do the homework, and then write it on the board, whereupon he corrected any mistakes (often without any explanation), and sent us home again with more homework. I dropped the class mid-year, with a D because I refused to cheat on the midterm (everyone had written him off as a teacher, so the two kids who KNEW calc would do their exams FAST, and pass them around for everyone else to copy…).
Did my pre-admit testing for college, and I couldn’t even remember how to do algebra. I cried when I got home. I LOVED algebra. Ended up taking remedial math. Got another really really good teacher, who knew that most of us were suffering FEAR, not lack of brains. He would crack jokes when we started getting tense. Used to teach from the back of the classroom, or sitting down. Taught us how to derive everything possible (if you forget, you can always derive it). Average score at the midterm was a D, average FINAL grade was a B-. I got a D- for the midterm, and an A+ on the final. Went on to take my required trig/stats class (not a math major, here), and got an A.
Don’t use math MUCH, but still love a good puzzle. The logic and pattern of it appeals.
So because english is a language whose rules we learn early - and those rules don’t change much - we can slide by a bad english teacher without visible trauma (though I’ve seen the writing that results…). Still, if you can READ, you can figure out a lot of the stuff on your own. But math needs a passionate, interested, creative guide for every new level. There’s so much more complexity in the LANGUAGE of math, so much completely new at each level, that if you get one bad teacher, it beomes very hard to move on - either you don’t have the foundations for the next step, or having needed a guide and gotten someone who made you miserable, instead, it makes further exporation in math very unpleasant. I know at least three other people in my remedial math class who said if they’d had even ONE teacher as good as this one, they’d have enjoyed math a lot. Granted, once you are a grownup, it is your problem to get over, not the teacher’s. But kids shouldn’t be responsible for making the class effective.
basically, we can’t afford to have ANY bad math teachers. Some other topics are somewhat salvagable if you get one bad one, but math has a different flow - stage one is absolutely the foundation for stage 2, etc. (granted, you get a bad english teacher for the grammar level, and you have a problem, too…)
