I used to think this was just restricted to pre-college math, and to East-Asian parents. After I had erstwhile-parent types infantilize me over my adult hobbies

I used to think this was just restricted to pre-college math, and to East-Asian parents. After I had erstwhile-parent types infantilize me over my adult hobbies, I realized, you need a creative person in order to facilitate creative discovery. But it takes guts to try to learn something the "right" way. Imagine going through a whole semester, never once learning what was going to be on the AP test. And it takes some stature to teach it too. Imagine doing a writing class, where there absolutely must not be any rules or criteria for grading, where you really must say, I'll know it when I see it, but there really are going to be some yeses and nos. What do you want to produce? People who can come up with new solutions to new problems on their own, or people who do cookie-cutter rules? How do you keep doing that throughout your life, long after school? People say they want the former until they come up against the reality of uncertainty, the possibility that there might not actually be any answers, and then they go right back to memorizing and teaching rules. They go back to justifying things the way they are.