We seem to accept what's essentially illiteracy in all the subjects that require more precise thinking as the status quo. Most people don't seem to understand m

We seem to accept what's essentially illiteracy in all the subjects that require more precise thinking as the status quo. Most people don't seem to understand much about chemistry, physics, logic or computers either, and that doesn't get them in for a lot of stick. If people are poorly taught and have gaps in their understanding that are never adequately addressed, then I can see how they'd think that the problem was them - that they couldn't do maths. Couldn't make the connections that were expected of them and portrayed as normal functioning for maths. Maths is different to history, and many other subjects, in that regard. If you don't understand something in history, it probably doesn't have a massive list of dependencies that you're going to fail a lot of stuff in the future on. If you don't understand something in English, the worst that's going to happen is you have an esoteric interpretation of the text. You can still do those subjects if you don't really understand them, as long as you use the right buzzwords and hook them off the right things. I suspect part of the answer may just be that admitting you can't do history or the like is different to admitting that you can't do maths in that it's unclear what someone would even mean by claiming that they can do history. Certainly the claim that someone knows a lot about the broad strokes of history would rarely be justified these days.