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I feel the opposite.

Before high school, math is just a grind of memorization and unmotivated manipulation of numbers.

Many students (ok, me, but I expect the same was true of others), get turned on to math for the first time when they encounter proofs in high school geometry and also actual applications in high school physics.

It's a revelation to students that math can be a way to go from one truth to another and thus find new truths. It's a way of thinking and that can be very exciting.

Tragically, many students disengage before this can happen because of sheer boredom and the tedium of endless math drills. Once they develop a gap in their knowledge it becomes difficult to progress unless those gaps are addressed. For lots of students, it all ends with fractions. You'd be surprised how many adults don't really understand fractions. For others it ends with algebra, and for the college bound it ends with calculus.

Only math majors and a minority of engineering/science/CS folks get past the "standard sequence" of math courses in college and gain an appreciation for the really interesting stuff that comes AFTER all that.

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red75prime 4 days ago | parent [-]

> Tragically, many students disengage before this can happen because of sheer boredom and the tedium of endless math drills

It's tragic and all, but were there attempts to teach non-preselected children/adolescents interesting stuff first? What are the results?

	▲	crispyambulance 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I don't know. There is a certain amount of drudgery that unavoidable in learning mathematics, IMHO. Moreover, looking at the math textbooks of my niece and the students that I've tutored over the years, there's no effort spared in trying to make math "fun". If anything there's perhaps too much distraction caused by attempting to make a connection with the students and a failure to clearly and logically explain the math. I don't have the answers, but believe that it's incredibly helpful to track students, intervene when they show a lack of understanding and not let them slip through the cracks. I do agree with the OP that everyone is capable of math but it's a long journey and it takes a lot of practice.