I’m gonna be honest y’all, all throughout my life people have given me so much shit for asking why something happens- repeatedly calling me childlike, telling me that’s just the way it is, it is what it is, etc. Shit sucks
Bringing this back to math though, the best math teachers I’ve ever had didn’t see a problem with providing the “why” and when that was given, I kinda succeeded. Who could’ve guessed, I didn’t hate math and thought there was a chance that I could do it if someone explained it in my language!
Trying to relearn some stuff for my own benefit, thought this new comm might be a good place to start my journey so let me know if you have any suggestions!
I don't know that there is a why in proper math study. You know how any number plus nine is one less and ten more? So you can just rearrange the numbers without doing the math as such? Thst is an artifact of how we do math. When you look at other states with other math systems they had other little gimmicks. Like, the way you did calculations on an abacus or with calculation boards is wild to my mind. I can only think of numberplate on YouTube that covers any of this but I am not deeply a math's person. I just think it is neat. I have veen trying you learn babalonian finger counting and cool math tricks to do with that but I am not sure it will ever have a purpose really
There’s definitely a why for all mathematics but it’s difficult to find the right explanation for your audience. High school mathematics is often the surface level of a deeper structure that is deemed too complex to teach to high school students. But I think in most countries education books tend to too often give false or no explanations rather than good explanations that are a bit complex.
Every student is different and some people do prefer to memorise derivatives instead of understanding how to derive them. This should be accepted and made possible when the student is not intending to become a mathematician or a scientist. However that does not mean that the deeper explanation should be withhold or ignored. My math books always had blue optional to read boxes of text that would provide answers to the why questions. I think that that is very good for students who need those answers to be able to learn. I still believe it would overall be better for most students if mathematics education was more focused on untangling the entire structure of a domain and maybe covering a bit less subjects rather than staying on the surface while covering more subjects but I don’t know if that’s my own bias speaking.
If you ask the why questions often enough in mathematics you will enter the more philosophical domain of the foundations of mathematics. I wonder if anyone has ever tried incorporating that domain into high school mathematics, it would be fun to teach.