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 tha

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.