Why is math so hard to do for other people in the world?

To make math easy for my students, whenever I become a math teacher, is the sole purpose why I want to be an educator. To understand how to make math easy, one needs to understand the whats, hows, whys of why people struggle with math.

Most people do not relate to math well and it usually starts around the middle/highschool level.

It's really no one's fault, to be honest.

At some point after arithmetic people start to lose sight, rather never realize what math is actually about. Math is more than counting, it is about critical thinking, logic, reason, pattern, and theory, way more than just digits. Yet, common education( at least here in the US) teaches to follow steps to solve problems as if it were a cookbook, just memorize the recipe and your good to go. If one gets the right or wrong answer, they would be lost as to explain what is truly happening.

Example Learning algebra I followed steps to solve for “x. ” Yet, I never knew, truly, what I was doing. All I remember thinking was the y intercept helped me get the “x.” Only later in self study in college did I bump into the fundamental theorem of algebra…. It all made sense. That moment put it into perspective for me.

If we want people to be good at math we have to give perspective on what is being taught, either presenting theory(which Uncle Sam should do), or simply by giving the bigger picture. With my example, to many people, they see it as a whole bunch digits and letters, get confused, and rightly so. If we explain to someone what's going down, that we are studying lines and that the intercepts(roots) help us better study(analyze) and capture these here lines and curves.

“Mr. Teacherman, Why do we need to study lines and cruves?” Great question student! To help us better understand the world around us. Just studying these simple curves on a graph may seem meaningless, but it forms the basis for things that aid us in many human endeavors, from building edifices to computer programming.

I wish that teachers did that in every class everyday.

In the US, we follow the cookbook method disservicing an entire country, especially those who are on the lower end of society.

arrange the equations with like terms in columns.

analyze the coefficients of x or y.

add the equations and solve for the remaining variable.

substitute the value into either equation and solve.

check the solution.

step-by-step explanation: