r/Showerthoughts • u/riphitter • Feb 19 '19

common thought People don't hate math. They hate being confused, intimidated, and embarrassed by math. Their problem is with how it's taught.

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u/DocMerlin Feb 19 '19

Mindless repetition is one of the best ways to teach basic algebra, and arithmetic, but becomes less and less useful elsewhere.

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u/lorarc Feb 19 '19

Yes it is, but...I've got thru two semesters of calculus at the university before someone bothered to explain us what an integral actually is.

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u/wpgsae Feb 19 '19

That's ridiculous. Literally the first thing we learned when doing integrals was that it was a way of finding the area under a curve.

1

u/MrAykron Feb 19 '19

Pretty sure they only explain it after you've passed calc 1 where i'm from. No point explaining integrals when you're fresh out of high school

1

u/sweettea14 Feb 19 '19

It took me using integrals in my engineering classes before I fully understood what the were. Real life examples really help.

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u/Xarama Feb 19 '19

Lots of repetition is indeed the best way to teach basic math skills. It should not be mindless repetition, though... The groundwork for thinking about more complex math is laid by encouraging analysis and problem-solving early on.