I agree, along with proofs, intuition, and elegance. For most of my academic career, I hated math. I was always good at it, typically getting good grades with

I agree, along with proofs, intuition, and elegance. For most of my academic career, I hated math. I was always good at it, typically getting good grades without needing to study. But I found it so incredibly boring, because it was presented as "memorize these rules and formulas, then use them when the test prompts you to". It wasn't until my third year at university that something finally clicked. I was taking automata theory, and the mix between rigorous thinking, writing proofs, and applying intuition nearly as often as theorems (along with the sudden realization that writing proofs is a lot like writing programs) flipped a bit in my mind. I suddenly loved math. It made sense to me for the first time. And I could look at a proof and tell whether it was beautiful or an ugly hack. I've got high hopes for the Bootstrap curriculum [0]. I think that kind of interactive, rigorous introduction to mathematics and programming would be very beneficial for students (and the research agrees). If I ever have kids, that's how I plan to teach them algebra. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrap_curriculum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrap_curriculum