One Of The Striking Things About Math Education For Me Is That Most Of The Common Objections To How The

One of the striking things about math education for me is that most of the common objections to how the material is taught have really simple answers, but I have never in my life heard a math instructor provide those answers.

For example, something you hear a lot is: “why am I losing points for not showing my work when I got the correct answer?”, or even “why are we being told to use this procedure at all when the answers are so obvious?”.

There answer to both of those questions, of course, is: “Because what’s actually being taught is a problem-solving method that works for big and complicated problems as well as small and simple ones. We practice it with the simple ones first so that you can easily compare your intuitive solution with the results of applying the method and know whether you did it right. That way, when we get to the complicated ones where the intuitive approach doesn’t work, you can have confidence that you practised the method correctly.”

Not once in two decades of schooling did I hear that rationale offered – if an instructor deigned to address the objections at all, their response typically boiled down to some variation of “because this is how it’s done”.

Like, what’s difficult about this?