monic_binomial's comments

Heh. You can cite all the old wives' tales, superstitious folklore, and education research papers you want. None of that makes it more likely that a 95 IQ student will ever understand precalculus.

I was a math teacher for 10 years. I had to give it up when I came to realize that "how to think" is about 90% biological and strongly correlated to what we measure with IQ tests.

This may be grave heresy in the Temple of Tabula Rasa where most education policy is concocted, but nonetheless every teacher I ever knew was ultimately forced to chose between teaching real math class with a ~30% pass rate or a watered-down math Kabuki show with a pass rate just high enough to keep their admins' complaints to a low grumble.

In the end we teachers would all go about loudly professing to each other that "It's not about numbers, it's about learning how to think" in a desperate bid to quash our private suspicions that there's actually precious little that can be done to teach "how to think."