[forrestpitz]

I feel like the sentiment of "I can't do math" stems mostly from the way math is taught. To contrast we can look at how reading is taught to elementary students. Students read books at their "level." Once they are comfortable with the words and concepts in a given level then the difficulty of the content is scaled up appropriately. In math, students are often pulled along with the rest of the class. It is very difficult to understand division when you are still struggling to understand subtraction. This happens for a number of reasons but mostly because it is more difficult to teach math on an individual level the way reading can be though. I think that the solution to issues like this will/would look similar to the reverse model that the folks at KahnAcademy are creating. It's clear that it is difficult to teach math of every student is at a different point and understands a different amount of math. By transferring the teaching onto prerecorded videos the students are able to learn at their own pace and rewatch the lessons for more difficult concepts without exasperating the teacher. Salman Kahn has stated that his cousin (that he first started making videos for) told him that she liked learning from him in his videos more because he wouldn't get frustrated when she didn't understand a concept. She could just watch it again. This also frees the teacher to help the students who are learning at a slower rate or have gotten stuck with a difficult concept.