Humans are more terrible at teaching math than any other concept. I remember being taught algebra by a teacher that had terrible idiosyncrasies. She would somet

Humans are more terrible at teaching math than any other concept. I remember being taught algebra by a teacher that had terrible idiosyncrasies. She would sometimes write numbers and variables differently, and this caused major problems trying to understand how and why the variable was to be written differently due to new context. But she would just go on writing it differently, just because she was weird. For example, she would sometimes write 'x' using two curves that didn't touch ')(' and expected you to continue with the algebra equation as if nothing was strange. My point is that teachers still don't understand how to correctly teach math to students. They reinforce using their old methods that are overall sloppy shorthand in a space where rigor, both visually and conceptually, must be maintained. When young minds are this fresh, you cannot have this slop and idiosyncrasy in your lessons and expect students to become enlightened. So no, forcing them to do some math is not harmful. Poor teaching in a very hard space definitely is harmful.