>Why is this? If I had to guess, I'd say it's based on the fact that math involves a lot of critical thinking and critical thinking is very difficult to teach. Those who attempt to do so often do it very poorly, which leads students to the false belief that math is extremely difficult. On the other hand, it's very easy to teach someone to memorize formulas and plug in numbers, so that's what we're most often taught in math class. That's good enough to get us through the standardized test so we can graduate from high school, but memorizing formulas and plugging in numbers is not "doing math"

This got me thinking a bit: What if it's the opposite?

I know I'm really bad at memorizing formula, and I need to really figure out everything for it to stick in my head. You say it's easier to get people to do that, but loads of people have bad experiences with math, so maybe it's because we teach it that way and not in spite of?

Trying to apply memorized formula to a problem is a form of pattern matching, and it might be harder because of all the doubts from the abstraction. This might end up being less efficient than we would originally think (oh I memorised all this, but I have no confisdence in using it...). In the end we have just displaced the difficulty to something a lot less tangible.

Maybe we should try lowering the scope of what is taught, but really try to make sure people can use what they learn, even if it's small.