All people who have successfully completed elementary school should be able to use mathematical tools for not only pre-requisite rote knowledge but as a creative tool as well.

All people who have successfully completed elementary school should be able to use mathematical tools for not only pre-requisite rote knowledge but as a creative tool as well.

I know so deeply that their feelings aren't founded on any kind of understanding about what they're talking about, so mostly I just feel bad for them. Outwardly, I take it as an opportunity to get all "language of patterns, science of infinity", which I've gotten pretty good at because every other day someone next to me on the bus/train sees me doing calc and is like "OH GOD I AM GLAD I DON'T HAFTA DO THAT LOL" Every single time has ended with them being like "hey, that's pretty cool actually."

Don't get mad, just manipulate reality.

>>64

This is a great approach. Thank you for being so level-headed about it all.

I tutor maths at a junior high school. So I work with a lot of students who are just learning if they're partial to math even a small bit or if they feel like they have no reason what-so-ever to learn it. Incidentally the many of the students in the latter category are failing their classes and trying to motivate them with something other than "you need to know this in order to go to high school" is a complicated task. At such times I fantasize about a better math education for students like this that can show them that everyone in spirit is a mathematician.

Like >>64 explained, I think presenting elementary concepts in more "advaned" maths to people who aren't techincally savvy is a good approach to opening them up at least a bit. eg I'm the first person in my family who went to college and when they learned I wanted to study math they were rather turned off. One day, however, by brother who studies english and philosophy asked me about how "advanced" math is done and how research is done if it's so abstract. I explained deductive and abstract reasoning to him and illustrated it with basic geometric examples from Group Theory. Surprisingly he took it really well when he learned that it wasn't as esoteric as he had previously thought it would be. And he hated his last math class, elementary algebra/ precalculus. So even he, in spirit, is a mathematician and I find that rather encouraging as an aspiring mathematician myself.