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Amazing how this comment is diametrically opposed to the truth :) It's in fact the very contrary! "Drilling maths" into kids is how you get everyone except the

Amazing how this comment is diametrically opposed to the truth :) It's in fact the very contrary! "Drilling maths" into kids is how you get everyone except the most pre-disposed to "hate maths" with a passion. Because they grow up thinking mathematics is deathly boring busy work of repeating the same busy-work ad nauseum. Teaching rote memorization is useless and wastes time that could better be used exploring ideas and concepts and abstractions and all that makes mathematics beautiful. I recommend reading "A Mathematician's Lament" https://maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf https://maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/devlin/LockhartsLame...

vundercind 2y ago
I am deeply suspicious of this POV because in my actual experience it was precisely when we shifted from “apply this thing” to something more like real math that classmates started to give up on math entirely. They may not have liked it before, but that didn’t mean they were bad at it. The anger and resentment and resistance to math came later, when we were past arithmetic and drilling (which were also by far the most useful parts of our primary and secondary school math education, in actual life, for most people) [edit] my suspicion is because it’s both entirely contrary to my experience, and always seems to come from people who like math so much that they majored in it and started to really love it right around the time the folks I’m thinking of above—a far larger set—have decided not just that they dislike math, but that they can’t do it and also that hardly matters because it seems to be pointless.
- andrepd 2y ago
  You seem to be extrapolating from very incomplete data. Maybe if you had a better mathematical education you wouldn't? :) /s
bitwize 2y ago
I can guarantee you that Lockhart drilled in the basic arithmetic problems until he knew his times tables and such by heart. He couldn't do things like algebra without this fundamental knowledge ingrained into the fiber of his being. You can't play a Chopin sonata, at least not smoothly and beautifully, without having played lots of boring scales and finger exercises. And you can't get to the fun, creative, beautiful bits of mathematics without having drilled in the fundamentals. Not unless you're Gauss or somebody.
- andrepd 2y ago
  You can't do abstract algebra without doing 847848161×6413045539 in pen and paper hundreds of times before? That's a new one! > fundamental knowledge ingrained into the fiber of his being I agree! That knowledge being: mathematical reasoning, logic, capacity for abstraction, rigour... and NOT doing stupid mindless work over and over again until you can recite multiplication tables by heart. Sorry, that's accounting, not mathematics.

vundercind 2y ago

I am deeply suspicious of this POV because in my actual experience it was precisely when we shifted from “apply this thing” to something more like real math that classmates started to give up on math entirely. They may not have liked it before, but that didn’t mean they were bad at it. The anger and resentment and resistance to math came later, when we were past arithmetic and drilling (which were also by far the most useful parts of our primary and secondary school math education, in actual life, for most people) [edit] my suspicion is because it’s both entirely contrary to my experience, and always seems to come from people who like math so much that they majored in it and started to really love it right around the time the folks I’m thinking of above—a far larger set—have decided not just that they dislike math, but that they can’t do it and also that hardly matters because it seems to be pointless.

andrepd 2y ago
You seem to be extrapolating from very incomplete data. Maybe if you had a better mathematical education you wouldn't? :) /s

bitwize 2y ago

I can guarantee you that Lockhart drilled in the basic arithmetic problems until he knew his times tables and such by heart. He couldn't do things like algebra without this fundamental knowledge ingrained into the fiber of his being. You can't play a Chopin sonata, at least not smoothly and beautifully, without having played lots of boring scales and finger exercises. And you can't get to the fun, creative, beautiful bits of mathematics without having drilled in the fundamentals. Not unless you're Gauss or somebody.

andrepd 2y ago
You can't do abstract algebra without doing 847848161×6413045539 in pen and paper hundreds of times before? That's a new one! > fundamental knowledge ingrained into the fiber of his being I agree! That knowledge being: mathematical reasoning, logic, capacity for abstraction, rigour... and NOT doing stupid mindless work over and over again until you can recite multiplication tables by heart. Sorry, that's accounting, not mathematics.