Comment Re:The talented ones can (Score 1) 83
The one thing education can do for the talented people is quit bogging them down for 12 years in whatever the latest educational flavor of the day is. They don't need the kooky way math is approached now, they need the basics. Teach them addition, subtraction,multiplication, and division the way it was taught in the '70s, then point out a couple mental tricks. They'll then develop their own set of tricks that work for them doing math in their head.
The less talented will at least come out of it knowing how to add a column of numbers and figure out how much 5 apples will cost given the cost of one, which is more than they come out with now.
They claim they want parents to work with their children on homework, but then make it impossible by expecting the kids to do arithmatic in such an odd way that parents who are scientists or engineers can't make heads or tails of it. I see the confusion on reddit from time to time. Kid is asked to use repeated addition to solve 5x3. Kid writes 5+5+5=15. Teacher marks it wrong. No explanation. Turns out she wanted 3+3+3+3+3=15.
So now Dad, an engineer, can't help with 2nd grade math and kid learns he is "bad at math" even though he got the right answer on every question.