I have a sneaking suspicion that there's something fundamentally wrong with how we approach math in school, given that:
1) It's presented as the most important thing in the world, pretty much, and
2) I've forgotten most of it past the first semester of algebra 1 in high school but that's mostly because... it wasn't important, at all, for me. And I think that's overwhelmingly the typical experience.
Honesty, I struggle to even talk fluently about early grade school math. "You can flip around the terms in a multiplication problem and the result's the same, because of the... uh... transitive property? Maybe? I think that's the name?"
Meanwhile, aside from when I'm trying to help my kids with math, life goes on just fine.
1) It's presented as the most important thing in the world, pretty much, and
2) I've forgotten most of it past the first semester of algebra 1 in high school but that's mostly because... it wasn't important, at all, for me. And I think that's overwhelmingly the typical experience.
Honesty, I struggle to even talk fluently about early grade school math. "You can flip around the terms in a multiplication problem and the result's the same, because of the... uh... transitive property? Maybe? I think that's the name?"
Meanwhile, aside from when I'm trying to help my kids with math, life goes on just fine.