Comment by jongjong

Yes I think you're right about that. Most teachers are not good at teaching. You have to wonder why they need special certification to be a school teacher when the result is so bad. I know that most teachers were bad because I had a few excellent teachers and the contrast made it obvious. I failed high school math, then I went to university and did a more advanced math course; I got distinction. I didn't even invest more time. The difference is that, at university, I was mostly skipping the lectures and reading directly from the textbook.

Math at school was just insane; it was an endless stream of; if you see this problem, use this formula. If you see that problem, use that formula... But nobody understood what they were doing. Nobody learned math from first principles.

It's weird though because in university, as I was doing well in math, I came across John Von Neumann's quote "In mathematics, you don't understand things. You just get used to them."

To me, this suggests that some gifted people have the ability to apply complex rules without understanding them from first principles... But that was absolutely never the case for me. I'm the opposite of that. I can't apply something before I fully understand it.