This is fascinating. I did a few semesters of teaching undergrad math while working towards my math MS, so this was completely downstream of the K-12 education system and I saw none of it. But I did notice a lot of different attitudes towards math that fit with the observations above. In the end, it was hard to teach to students who didn’t care, and I much preferred tutoring since I could ask questions and try and really get into the gears of their misunderstanding and replace it with functional gears. Preferring this as often as possible to memorization or drilling a routine! In classes there was so much misunderstanding because of people who had only memorized, and imperfectly, so when the “rule” didn’t work, they were lost. (e.g., “FOIL” for multiplying two binomial terms instead of understanding distribution of multiplication)
Anecdotally, I was one of those who decided not to teach because I saw how low paid and how draining it was on teachers. :(
This is fascinating. I did a few semesters of teaching undergrad math while working towards my math MS, so this was completely downstream of the K-12 education system and I saw none of it. But I did notice a lot of different attitudes towards math that fit with the observations above. In the end, it was hard to teach to students who didn’t care, and I much preferred tutoring since I could ask questions and try and really get into the gears of their misunderstanding and replace it with functional gears. Preferring this as often as possible to memorization or drilling a routine! In classes there was so much misunderstanding because of people who had only memorized, and imperfectly, so when the “rule” didn’t work, they were lost. (e.g., “FOIL” for multiplying two binomial terms instead of understanding distribution of multiplication)
Anecdotally, I was one of those who decided not to teach because I saw how low paid and how draining it was on teachers. :(