[dkirkman]

> If I had to guess, I'd say it's based on the fact that math involves a lot of critical thinking and critical thinking is very difficult to teach.

I think it's even worse than that -- I suspect that many teachers in American public schools are terrified of math themselves, and they transmit that terror to their students. It's going to be very hard for a student to learn to view mathematics as reason if their teachers don't see it that way.

There was a point when I was in grade school and we were learning formulas for the area of different shapes. When a trapezoid came up and I noted that it could be decomposed into a square and two triangles, I was admonished to just use the formula from the handout. Don't get in the habit of trying to think while doing math, it'll just get you in trouble.

This was from an otherwise excellent teacher, but when it came to math we were to turn the thinking switch to "off". This fear of math seemed to not been exceptional, even among my high school math instructors. I may have had a bad run (public school in California in the 80s), but I've been told similar stories by most everyone I've met who eventually managed to figure math out on their own.

[bjhoops1]

Stories like this make me glad I was homeschooled. Mom handed me a Saxon math textbook and I just read it and did the problems. No fear, no classroom consensus that "math is haaaard".

[noAlchemy]

I can support this from the other side. Coming out of a maths degree at a reasonably good university, a lot of the mathematicians who became teachers were those who struggled and pretty much gave up at some point in undergrad. Pushing many of those who will become teachers to mathematical breaking point seems like a bad way of doing things, and I think contributes to this. It's hard to think of a good alternative that still produces enough teachers though.

[aidenn0]

Only thing I can think of is to pay maths teachers really well, which probably means increasing class-sizes, so is a no-go at least in the current political clime of the US.

[Kluny]

I recall a math teacher I had in grade 9 - she was normally a phys. ed. teacher, who had been voluntold to teach math when the usual math teacher had a nervous breakdown and took a year off. She freely admitted that she had studied phys. ed. because she "loved to teach", and wanted her students to have a better time than she did, but she had struggled in English and Math, so she went for one of the easier specialties. Not exactly a shining role model there. All the other students loved her, of course, but I thought it would be better if she were a babysitter, not a teacher.