Comment by magicalhippo
9 hours ago
I'm not a math teacher, but I do enjoy math, and I have helped several family members and friends with math courses.
I've long thought that almost all have the capability to learn roughly high school level math, though it will take more effort for some than for others. And a key factor to keep up a sustained effort is motivation. A lot of people who end up hating math or think they're terrible at it just haven't had the right motivation. Once they do, and they feel things start to make sense and they're able to solve problems, things get a lot easier.
Personally I also feel that learning math, especially a bit higher-level stuff where you go into derivations and low-level proofs, has helped me a lot in many non-math areas. It changed the way I thought about other stuff, to the better.
Though, helping my family members and friends taught me that different people might need quite different approaches to start to understand new material. Some have an easier time approaching things from a geometrical or graph perspective, others really thrive on digging into the formulas early on etc. One size does not fit all.
One size doesn't fit all is what I believe Common Core math is attempting. The part that it misses is that a student should probably be fine demonstrating one modality instead of having to demonstrate them all
Effort, combined with the right motivation, can overcome most perceived barriers
It sounds like trivial insight, but at least in my experience many adults and even teachers have this "it's hard so it's ok to not want to do it" attitude towards math. And I think that is very detrimental.
Well, isn't that a summary of most things? Most things worth learning are hard, but many things not worth learning are also hard. So we have to prioritize what hard things are worth learning. Math is low on the list for many people for (I think) understandable reasons.
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