- #1
slam7211
- 36
- 0
Im an undergrad physics student, who has lived and learned in the US all my life, for obvious reasons has taken a lot of math courses in college. A lot of these courses covered quite a few proofs, and a lot of conceptual proof-ish questions (aka not rigorous proofs but still requiring you to come up with logical reasoning etc). The funny thing I have noticed is how my fundamental understanding of math has basically left me stumped with most of these questions, I am not asking for answers here (I can read rules) I'm just noticing how the way I was taught math (aka learning formulas) has basically harmed my ability to answer such questions. its something I notice throughout my school.
I assume it has to do with the fact that because we have to learn math from such an early age, we learn by being fed assumptions about math, so we can do math (aka we are to young at some age to understand why something in math is so we are taught to just assume its true because our teacher says so). I am wondering if math teachers professors etc see this as well, and can think of ways that we could teach math better from an earlier age, given the cognitive limitations of children at young ages, to prevent this from happening, or if you happen to be from somewhere outside the US and learned math differently that seemed to work what was it?
Also if this needs to be moved elsewhere I am sorry
I assume it has to do with the fact that because we have to learn math from such an early age, we learn by being fed assumptions about math, so we can do math (aka we are to young at some age to understand why something in math is so we are taught to just assume its true because our teacher says so). I am wondering if math teachers professors etc see this as well, and can think of ways that we could teach math better from an earlier age, given the cognitive limitations of children at young ages, to prevent this from happening, or if you happen to be from somewhere outside the US and learned math differently that seemed to work what was it?
Also if this needs to be moved elsewhere I am sorry