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I completely agree with you. I think it's a failure of the school system from a very early age because math is heavily dependent on foundations of previous cla

I completely agree with you. I think it's a failure of the school system from a very early age because math is heavily dependent on foundations of previous classes. And I think it's more than just sharing the information we have to also make rational thinking fields as fun and cool as the emotional expression fields of study like English or Music and not the domain of 'nerds'. I think our whole culture would be way better off if people had better critical thinking logic and math skills.

6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
> because math is heavily dependent on foundations of previous classes. This is a point I hadn't thought enough about before. Great insight. It makes me think that maybe we just suck at education in general, and it only shows up in the subjects where continuation is dependent on previous courses. If you completely fail to understand american history, you can lie to yourself about being good at it, and continue to believe that when you get to european history. If you completely fail to understand the lessons from Fahrenheit 451, you can believe you're good at English (the subject, not the language) while you move on to Shakespeare. The only (pre-college) subjects I can think of that really require you to actually understand the prereq's material are math and language. And they share that people say "I'm just not a math person" or "I'm just no good at languages." I'd never thought about it with that lens before, but now I'm feeling kinda pessimistic. Like, if this hypothesis is true, it's not about bringing math education up to the bar of other subjects, it's about overhauling the entire system.