Exactly. Mathematics has never been a subject for the average mind, and it never will be. We really do a gigantic disservice to our truly gifted mathematics students. My son spent six years of elementary school doing two years worth of work and they kept telling me they’d accelerate him, but they were too scared they’d get a low score on a math standardized test to ever let the kids actually advance.

I can’t tell you how much simply WRONG stuff has been taught to my son over the years. I know this sounds like fiction, but he got a “B” in Algebra 1 in the seventh grade in a school system where they wouldn’t let the kids take their tests home. When I finally went in an inspected the tests well over half of the questions that were marked wrong he had done correctly and the teacher had missed. She, of course, did not have a math degree and my son’s father did.

A lot of times we tell kids, just give the teacher what they want, but in mathematics if you give them what they want and what they want is wrong it can be proven to be wrong.

Once, in a high level class, a problem was counted wrong when it was clear what they were asking the kids to do was not correct mathematically. I went to the teacher after this was counted wrong on a test. After I went and PROVED mathematically what they were doing was wrong they only gave me a, “I’ll look into it.” Then I get called back with where they had done those types of problems in class and the answers were in the back the book, the wrong way. The act like they’ve proved something by showing me the back of the book, when I’ve actually proved it, and try and act high and mighty about it. I then get to looking online to find some real examples of this (It was really a bad question — nothing you ever need to do) and I finally find a formal CORRECTION online to the book’s answers. They had done it wrong. This had been taught for over a decade in our school system incorrectly to the students.

Just get me real math teachers with real math degrees teaching the smart kids who actually have a chance to do real mathematics one day, and you can use any curriculum you want.