conuly

It makes sense.

A trained monkey (well... more or less) can give a scripted lesson. Anybody can give text out of a book and show a step-by-step way to do addition or subtraction, and they don't have to understand WHY it works or even THAT it works.

And we have now math teachers (in the early grades primarily female math teachers, which I'll get to in a second) who have been told for generations that Americans are failing at math, and who might never have been taught the basics themselves. (And any attempt to increase understanding by slowing the pace gets people complaining that kids aren't "doing real math". There are always powerful lobbies who want children to memorize a lot "the way we did", as though there was some magical time in the past when everybody left school doing calculus! On a side note, I resent the idea that all math education should be leading up to college math. What nonsense! How many people genuinely need that every day?)

Worse yet, in the US we have this idea that "girls aren't good at math". So if you have a female teacher who grew up hearing that and believing that... the results aren't pretty, especially not for any girls in her class. It's a stupid concept, but there it is.