Comment by bonoboTP

> But one of the big problems with math education is that we force students to struggle to a far greater degree than other subjects, under a belief that personal struggle, the “trying”, is the only way to truly get it.

I disagree. In fact, I found that often the better and more didactically streamlined the exposition is in a book, the less deeply I end up learning the material. It is precisely the personal struggle, having to make my own sketches and derivations, starting out with a misconception because of bad phrasing in the book and having to explore that misconception until I find what I misunderstood etc. makes the knowledge stick much better because it now feels my own, like an intimate friend.

Spoonfeeding may get people quicker to the point of solving the standardized quiz at the end of the chapter but that's not the same as learning and understanding. Another instance of metric-chasing in action.

It's a bit like how I learned MS Office or Photoshop by trial and error as a kid, or programming by mucking around trying to make a website do what I want. And you bet it was a struggle. Struggle but with reward at the end. Compare that with a handholding tutorial where you do learn how to do whatever the tutorial makers had in mind, but it won't generalize as much. Sounds totally dry. I loved computers, but hated school lessons that tried to teach us MS Office in the handholding spoonfeeding way. It's the death of the subject.

It's a safari in a safe car, looking at the animals through binoculars vs running around in the jungle in your own adventure amongst the beasts.