Dismayed, disgusted, appelled...
Having started writing this text at the age of 53, having reworked it from time to time when I thought about it or when I came across it again while cleaning out my old computers, I regularly went to see what Google, ” less and less my friend', was able to offer to a loser like me who would like, not to understand because it is now out of reach, but at least not to die a mathematical idiot. I came across quite a few things, including Yvan Monka's channel, aimed at middle and high school students. The guy is crystal clear, concise, and explains the concepts in a very basic way. A guy like that should have reconciled me, if not with maths at least with his peers, but no, it was quite the opposite... Just the first videos I watched (for 14 and 15 year olds) on literal expressions, equalities and equations with an undetermined variable were enough for me to realize how basic, simplistic and black and white the whole thing was. I realized that anyone of normal constitution and average intelligence was capable of reaching at least this level of “well-formatted parrot”. It's actually really stupid!
Moreover, just because it seems simpler or clearer doesn't make it more interesting! In fact, it's the other way around! I mean: spending ages balancing “plus this and minus that”, sending numbers on either side of the equal sign, reducing this and that, only to realize in the end that x = -1/3... Wow! What an abysmal thrill! Such an intergalactic satisfaction! Is that what you call a super-fun-tastic-rewarding-ludic thing? But is there any way to tell you that it's just boring, actually, pointless, on its own, without any practical application or purpose? Or how can you enjoy wasting your time like that? This mystery remains unsolved for me.
I realize 40 or 45 years too late that it was well within my reach (at least until 5th/4th grade, I didn't look any further ;-)). So how come I spent most of my life thinking that it was probably much more complicated than people wanted to admit, or that I didn't have a “mathematical mind”? How is it that in eight years of middle school/high school, when outside of class I sometimes had discussions on other subjects with these same teachers, none of them was able to point out my difficulties with a subject they knew by heart? How come that every time someone comes in the media to explain that it's easy, fun, etc., they can't prove it? Or just get us interested enough to want to find out more? Does maths generally make you dumb? Or is it only in France?
The devious side of this revelation is that it transformed what I would call an “indifference due to self-preservation” into an almost definitive aversion. I would just keep the maths at a distance, returning from time to time as a “perplexed observer” trying to extract something sensible from it, and now, as I begin to understand what I didn't at the time, to have a clearer vision of the industrial disaster that the teaching of maths was (is?) in France, including my learning, I just feel rage, “hatred” for all the pedantic morons who were my maths “teachers”.
I know that maths is a tool you have to know how to use. But during the learning process, you find yourself a bit like a prehistoric man learning to drive, without ever having heard of cars or roads and preferably following a very counterintuitive method. As if we spent the first year teaching him how to adjust the seats. “You'll see, it's great fun. I can't really tell you what happens next because you wouldn't understand, but go ahead and have fun, playing around with the backrest inclinations and headrest adjustments. It's great fun, isn't it? Isn't it? Alright then. . .”
In the second year, he is taught to turn the steering wheel left and right and to lower the windows. “Well, that's exciting already, isn't it? No? Oh really...”. Cro-Magnon doesn't really know why he's being taught all this, nor what a car is for, he who hasn't even invented the wheel yet. He's been vaguely told that it's for traveling and deliveries, well... so far it's been more of an inner journey, as for deliveries...
In the third year: he is taught how to use the brakes, on both feet and by hand. In the fourth year, he learns how to use the other pedals and the gear lever, but he still doesn't know how to start the engine, or what an engine is, for that matter. He has been repeating these actions for four years without really knowing what he will do with them later on.
That's how maths is taught in France, or at least how it used to be. And I quickly felt like a lost rat in a huge labyrinth. Fortunately, and completely by chance, I found a way out! And I swore to myself that I would never put my foot in there again.
