I was chatting yesterday with a math teacher. She had a terrible time in grade school learning math and now she teaches it. hmmm. I remember having an aptitude. In 6th grade, I was the only one who “got” long division. Probably they don’t even teach it any more. When I say I was the only one, I’m including the teacher. It was also the only class where I experienced corporal punishment. I think that there might have been a connection. Even so I ended up maxing out my private high school’s math classes when I was a junior - trig and pre-calc. Sadly, no one encouraged me to continue with math and I quizzed out of having to take any in college.
Algebraic methods are key to electrical engineering equations....
Most people that are good at Math do not teach Math. Instead, they become engineers.
Interestingly, I could tell from my classmate’s questions what it was that they needed to know. Only after I also learned that the teacher did not know what the student was missing did I decide that I might try my hand at teaching sometime.
Sadly, most math is taught by people who don’t get it. This leads to the students eventually dropping out, because math is cumulative.
And yes, it is hard to understand why teaching how to do long division makes sense in the age of calculators except for the theory about why it works. This is something that math teachers should understand, but most people don’t need.
Too bad no one encouraged you more, that is the teacher’s fault.
I had long division in third grade because we had a combined grades 3 and 4 class. We had an excellent teacher who encouraged us. It never occurred to us that it was too hard to try. I’d like to trade the cultivation of snowflakes for high expectations.
You’re a genius....