Why do many students find mathematics difficult?

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It's entirely the result of the way it's taught. There are some classrooms where students love to learn math and excel in it. In his essay A Mathematician's Lament, the mathematician and educator Paul Lockhart imagines what it would be like if we taught art or music to kids the way that we teach math. This leads him to conclude "In fact, if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently being done— I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soulcrushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education."

You can read the full essay here: https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf