photonasty

This happened to me in high school! Supposedly, what I had said/written was "mess with my friends and you'll die." That is not something I would say, even when I was 16. What the actual fuck, AOL?

What do you think are the biggest problems today in how mathematics education is approached (ranging from elementary to high school)? It seems like a lot of people get turned off to math early on, especially people who are maybe a bit more naturally inclined toward verbal or language skills. Is there anything you think should be improved, or approached in a different way, to make math education more effective? It seems like a lot of otherwise highly intelligent adults are strikingly math-illiterate.

Thanks so much for answering! I agree about algebra, I think. While the concepts of algebra are kind of interesting from my adult perspective, I did very poorly in math beyond honors level geometry, and I find the only "algebra" I use in everyday life is very basic. (Like, 35-x=27 kind of basic.)

I like the idea of combining math and computer programming. It seems like perhaps it would help teach kids more of the logical processes and ways of thinking behind mathematics as a whole; as opposed to just "this is how you solve this kind of equation. Memorize these formulae."

As someone who did poorly in math in school (as an example, my verbal and writing SAT scores were both a perfect score of 800, but my math was a paltry 590), I agree very much with the concept of making math more engaging for young students. I think for many people that aren't really naturally inclined toward an innate talent for doing math, mathematics can be hard to relate to. It all seems very abstract and it's hard to get a mental "grasp" on what's going on.