Re:How Math Academy pulled me out of the Valley of Despair
by ninetyninenine on Thursday March 06, 2025 @11:41AM
(#43282184)
A wonder no one uses this for programming.
Re:How Math Academy pulled me out of the Valley of Despair
by nicf on Thursday March 06, 2025 @11:51AM
(#43282326)
Uses what?
Re:How Math Academy pulled me out of the Valley of Despair
by ninetyninenine on Thursday March 06, 2025 @02:09PM
(#43283964)
Proofs
After teaching proof-writing to my students for several years now, I've seen a lot of variation in how quickly students take to the skill. Some of them have the same experience that it sounds like you and I had, where it "clicks" right away, some of them struggle for a while to figure out what the whole enterprise is even about, and everything in between. Basically everyone gets better at it over time, but for some that can mean spending a decent amount of time feeling kind of lost and frustrated.
And this is a very self-selected group of students: they're all grown-ups who decided to spend their money and spare time learning this stuff in addition to their jobs! For the kind of high school student who just doesn't really think of themselves as a "math person", who isn't already intrinsically motivated by the joy of discovering what makes integrals tick, I think it would be an even harder sell. High school math teachers have a hard job: they have to try to reach students at a pretty wide range of interest and ability levels, and sadly that often leads to a sort of lowest-common-denominator curriculum that doesn't involve a lot of risk-taking.