I feel the same way about just math in general, and all the sciences that derive a lot of their knowledge and systems from it. You start learning math as just high level/abstracted away things where you just have to memorize that this thing does that and in this case do this instead, especially derivation I remember they showed us the formula with dy/dx, but they never showed us any proofs of why or how that lead to the different outcomes, we just had to memorize.
Meanwhile, later when you get to higher education, math just kind of explode into this creative problem solving field with loads of interesting problems and ways to reason about them, but you almost have to relearn it/properly learn the basics over again when you get there, because you never learned why or how the basics works, just the input and output of the basics.
I had the opposite experience. My teacher took extra care to explain to us why and how certain things worked in math. The reason I loved math so much, and still do, is because I never had to memorize anything. I just had to understand how it worked. In biology, however, it was very different. I had to memorize facts instead of understanding them.
I agree in spirit. I’d love to see a curriculum that somehow teaches kids to “discover” counting, addition, the utility of notation, squares, cubes, up through square roots, complex numbers, derivatives, etc…. But I feel like it would be tough to create.
Meanwhile, later when you get to higher education, math just kind of explode into this creative problem solving field with loads of interesting problems and ways to reason about them, but you almost have to relearn it/properly learn the basics over again when you get there, because you never learned why or how the basics works, just the input and output of the basics.