Why are people in the United States socialized to believe that math is unreasonably difficult?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Interesting. I was always good at math in school. English not so much, never could diagram a sentence.

Then I got to calculus, and unlike you, it sunk me. But I think a large part of it is I developed other interests.

The math skills I have (almost naturally) created a career. Geometry was natural. I first became a draftsman, and later got into computers and GIS. I’m now a GIS programmer. Fairly simple math, mostly logic.

I am now trying to learn banjo and guitar. It, like a lot of artistic disciplines is/are largely grounded in ‘math’.

22

I agree with RickJay that there can be a bajillion reasons someone can be bad at math. Once I got past the basic operations I could seldom tell whether I understood it or not until I was told by someone else whether or not the answer was right. I’m even worse at spatial relations and putting things together. One of our sons is a math major who started out a year ahead of most of his classmates. Go figure.

23

Funny thing is … I’d say the secret to being good at grade-school math is, in fact, rote memorization and hammering through algorithms.

Pattern recognition either comes or it doesn’t, it seems. Maybe it can be taught, maybe it can’t be taught … don’t know. IMHO, children who can learn some pattern system on their own – even a wholly idiosyncratic one – will take to math easier than people need to be explicitly taught pattern recognition with numbers.

24

In my case it’s because math IS unreasonably difficult.

In elementary school I was a whiz at arithmetic. Long division, fractions, all that stuff. For years my kids were astonished that I could look at a check and figure out the tip instantly.

Then they started with all those other math courses, like algebra, geometry and trigonometry. Every year I fell further behind. Oh, I could understand the concepts well enough to know there was a relationship between sine and cosine, but I was utterly incapable of doing anything with them. By the time I was 17 I was pulling a D average (despite the efforts of some very good teachers who managed to break through with other kids) and dragged through my last two years pretty much guessing at everything.

But I can still multiply in my head.

25

I don’t know about the rest of the world, but I was way ahead in math in the first and second grade (in fact, something I didn’t learn until I was in my thirties, but my school considered me for double promotion from first to third grade, but decided I was too immature). Then I transferred to public school, and math was all about switching to metrics. We didn’t learn metrics, though, like estimating sizes and distances in metrics, so we’d get a “feel” for it. Instead, we did endless conversions, which required learning formulas and the decimal system. It was exhausting. It’s no wonder the US rejected it. What was being rejected was having to do a math problem every time you encountered a number or quantity like weight or size. Ever. Which is what the metric system seemed like in the third grade.

We had barely learned the standard system. If they had given us problems like “A cat should be weighed in a) grams; b) kilograms; c) micrograms; d) metric tons;” or “A loaf of bread is approximately a) 30 centimeters; b) 1 meter; c) 15 centimeters; d) 30 millimeters,” we would have learned to think in metrics, while conversions kept our minds on the standard system-- not to mention that calling it the “standard” system didn’t do metrics any favors. I was pro-metrics when the process began, and anti when the month-long math unit ended. It put us behind the previous third grade on division, too.

So anyway, that’s the 1970s.

Why is math still hard?

I don’t know. I do know that I can do complicated arithmetic in my head, which is first and second grade math, and a little more elementary school math, but I get totally lost and wonder if I have dyscalculia when is comes to anything beyond algebra.

I also know in Europe they teach algebra in the lower grades, and we don’t introduce it until high school. My getting lost in math pretty much coincides with puberty.

Why I didn’t get equally lost in other subjects? well, English teachers were smart enough to cater to preteen angst, and I did get lost in science, but it was easier to catch up, and I had a father who taught political science who did not allow me to get lost in social studies. Other than that, I don’t know. My grades were not spectacular then.

I think the issue with math, unlike some other subjects, is that, once lost, lost forever, unless you go back and remediate what you missed.

Other than that, I have no guesses.

TL;DR: Teachers make it hard, and once lost lost forever, unlike other subjects.

26

For me learning them was basically an aha! experience…

4th grade. I was a bit frustrated looking at this incomprehensible sea of numbers.

Then, in a flash, it all came to me, all at once: I could see how it all fit together, perfectly, seamlessly.

Had no issues with them from that point on.

27

No, that’s definitely not it. Because your generation that was taught “New Math” grew up, and had kids who are still taught using those exact same methods that the 70s kids were taught, and those 70s kids still make exactly the same complaint, that the “New Math” is nothing at all like what they learned, and that’s why they can’t help their kids. The truth is that what their kids are learning is exactly what they learned all those years ago, except that they never actually did learn it, and they can’t help their kids not because the kids are doing something different, but because they’re idiots who blew off school as unimportant.

I think the biggest problem with math education in the US is that we start it so late. Most American students never get any math classes at all until high school geometry. And by that point, they’re so fed up with the boring nonsense that’s taught instead of math that they won’t even give real math a chance.

28

On the off-chance this isn’t a whoosh, it was Tolstoy who said in Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

.

29

It will get worse. Children, who see their parents doin household things, may be inspired to learn to do them as well, such as cooking, playing an instrument, household repairs, sports, writing, or doing simple arithmetic. No child ever sees his parents doing arithmetic anymore, so in school, it will be like learning Greek. It will have to be force-taught to children who see no apparent utility to the practice.

30

Funny thing is that I didn’t do that badly on the math sections of the PSAT, SAT, and ACT. I didn’t fall out of the top 20 percent until I took the GRE. I needed tutoring to pull out a D- in Algebra 2, though. It’s tough to master a subject when you can’t tell when you understand and when you don’t. In any other subject I knew if an answer was correct or not before the teacher graded it. If math teachers had given multiple choice tests I probably would have made decent grades even if I didn’t learn the material.

31

The United States does not have an ignorant culture; I disagree with you there, those of us in college are repeatedly warned how important it is to do well academically as a precursor to success int he world after you graduate.

Also, the OP appears to have a simplistic belief of math’s difficulty. There are different and higher levels of math of course, that are much more harder than others, depending on your experience, such as Calculus 3 would be much more hard than Pre-Algebra, for example. No one in the United States is brainwashed to believe some math problems are difficult, they are, and the OP has a condescending tone.

32

It might be connected to the way that we wildly overpay and overvalue Salesmen in this country. When being good at blather is paid the tip top amounts, and actually doing the things required for the salespeople to have product is undervalued, being able to do math is likely to be poo-pooed.

That in turn, may go back to our European roots, where the peasantry are seen as a necessary evil, rather than as an essential resource.

33

What I gleaned from the article is that for many students, an extremely formal, arithmetic and algebra based curriculum isn’t where it’s at. It’s too abstract and too… formal(?) while mathematical thinking can be taught without recourse to abstract calculations and arcane formulas that do little but quash any natural inclination toward that sort of thing.

34

This.

It’s not just enough that people don’t know important things - it’s perfectly OK to not know certain things, even important things. What’s not OK, is regarding that ignorance to be a praiseworthy virtue.

35

I agree with you and the article. Another point is that math is used an arbitrary gatekeeper or even a form of academic punishment. I am not bad at math at all and even liked it in my younger years but you couldn’t have convinced me that I wasn’t the worst person in the world at it when I took Algebra II when I was forced to take it in high school. I barely passed it and, still, to this day, couldn’t tell you what the subject is about or why almost all high school students are required to take it. My Algebra teacher always mumbled something about prerequisites or logical thinking skills but that was complete bullshit.

I was terrified to take any college level math classes after that but I finally had to take a notoriously difficult Stats class that I finally got my groove back. I made the highest grade in the class because we worked with real data-sets and I understood what was happening. The same thing was true for all stats classes that I took all the way through grad school even though some people insist that you have to know Algebra II to really know them. You don’t. The same thing is true with college level Calculus classes. They aren’t interested in teaching the subject well. They are mainly there to flunk out aspiring doctors and engineers (the former will never use Calculus in their careers and most of the latter rarely will).

I work in software development and some people claim that requires lots of math understanding as well but it doesn’t. It is mostly just pure logic and set theory in the case of databases. American style math courses have about as much value as being able to write perfect sheet music by hand before you play Rock-N-Roll guitar as referenced in the article.

If you want to teach logic, do it directly. If you want to teach triangles (trigonometry), break out some real life examples and measure them. If you want to teach useful geometry, start measuring the area of oddly sized rooms like real people might have a reason to do at some point. There is no practical use for writing abstract proofs unless you want to be the ultimate ancient Greek hipster. The people that want to do that will find their own kind eventually.

I always wondered why they don’t annotate math textbooks in English. That would have really helped me and presumably a lot of people like me. Most of the concepts aren’t that hard. It is just that the writing style and teaching methods are really hard to follow especially when they refuse to give you any sort of context.

36

That’s something I’ve noticed as well. I heard some British people complaining about how they were still having to teach Calculus I in MIT but how in Great Britain, everyone learns it when they’re 16.

I’ve always felt like the algebra-geometry-calculus sequence could have been introduced considerably earlier and like in European countries, calculus should be something everyone learns in high school since it’s so applicable.

37

new math? a new way of teaching it. My youngest is in second grade, when he brings home math homework, it takes me a minute or three to figure out what it is the teacher wants from him. Usually the method of teaching, or the method of solving the problem they want him to use seems completely unintuitive, and usually harder than the way I was taught. Its almost as if they are teaching him a completely new system of notation for numbers or something instead of making sure the students can do the basic functions and the easiest way to do them.

I never found math particularly difficult, put in a moderate amount of hard work and pulled solid B or weak A grades until high school. That was when the girls started noticing me in a good way.

In high school, the math courses progressed from algebra to geometry to calculus to trigonometry. I made it through algebra, had all the math credits I needed to graduate and, well, started taking classes that I thought would have more girls in them.

Maybe there is something to be said for separating the girls and boys after a certain age.

38

That isn’t only at the elementary levels. In college and grad school I had half a dozen math teachers, of which only one was any good; in fact, he was very, very good (and my undergrad thesis advisor).

IME, there is something that math and sports seem to suffer from more than other subjects: a surprising amount of teachers who either are naturals at the subject and therefore can’t understand someone having difficulty, and another large amount of teachers who don’t get it themselves but have been set to teach it. Any subject will be hateful if all your teachers have been bad.

39

Here is my hypothesis:

Most U.S. math teachers teaching at the grade school and high school levels hate math. They end up being bad teachers, and hence the students end up hating math, too.

40

Well, they teach it because it’s essential to everything else that follows – but you don’t have to take it. MIT just requires that everyone (even if you’re majoring in “Humanities:”) has to pass the six tests that are given for the first Calculus and the second calculus courses (18.01 and 18.02) But you don’t have to attend any classes in order to take the tests. I didn’t attend 18.01 classes, because I had “Calculus I” in high school, so I took all six tests the first week I was there, and went straight on to 18.02.

The problem, as you imply, is that not all American High Schools teach Calculus, and that, even if they do, students need not have taken it.
I think it’d be as traumatic to introduce it to American high schools immediately as it is proving to do anything with healthcare. As a math geek, I’m in favor of teaching calculus. But being married to a Math Dyslexic, I can se the other side. Pepper Mill had to overcome word dyslexia, which she did by herself, but she suspects it’s also responsible for her difficulties with and her dislike of math. She actually had to take pre-calc for a college business course, and struggled mightily. Finally she went to the professor, who was familiar with her performance and difficulties. He gave her a “D”, sufficient to pass, but made her promise not to take the math course again. She agreed immediately and gratefully. Ever since she’s sought any path that didn’t require math.

our daughter, MilliCal, has less of a problem with math, but clearly doesn’t love it, and has tried to minimize the need for math courses. But she can’t get away from Calculus, which I’m going to be helping her with in the near future.
All of which makes it clear to me that this isn’t just an affectation or a matter of style. Some people really do have immense difficulties with Higher Math that make studying it immensely difficult.