Oddbean new post about login | logout Math is hard for some. It’s ok.
It's me. Math is hard for me. My brain struggles with it and I get anxious. Not even with complex math lol. My wife can rattle numbers off all day and be correct and I just struggle like a potato. So I feel the math struggle bus pain as it runs over me
No, it's not okay. If you've spent a dozen years in public school & 4 years in college, it's not okay to "not be a math person." There are 2 or 3 things school should teach every human, and math is one of them.
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All of these subjects are difficult to retain for teens. Some do it well and others don’t care for rightful reasons. Public schools have plenty of math classes and science but it’s not just a teacher’s job to make sure you get it, you also must be interested and curious; and many kids aren’t. And frankly, I don’t blame them. With so much to distract; it’s hard to see why it may be important to pay attention. Also - adults leading by example (shortcuts)
These are fumdamental parts of daily social life. One way or another, every person should learn about themselves (language), their environment (math), and cooperation with others (economics). It doesn't need to be school that delivers those lessons, many learn them later in life. But it's impossible to live a successful life without grasping the basics.
School does attempt to give you all of this information but what kids receive and what kids retain can be a huge difference.
It's hard to not retain something that you need to deal with daily. It takes time & energy to create adults who can't balance a budget or answer the question "what is money?" but go and spend money every day
Just because you learn something once doesn't mean it's going to be easy to retain forever. Also, "math" is a very broad term. Being able to add and being able to solve complex calculus problems are clearly very different things. Math complexity isn't binary (easy or hard). Math has always been challenging for me and that's okay. Having a CS degree doesn't mean that all the math I learned is somehow easier for me just because I got a degree that included math classes. What the fuck even is "a math person?" I'd expect you to know since you think I should be one for going to public schools and college. I can use more complex mathematical tools than many, but that doesn't mean it comes easily or that I remember every single thing I covered in school.