Imagine highschoolers being too burnt out from failing to learn subtraction to learn subtraction. OP's comment reeks of the soft racism of low expectations.

You don't know anything about me, the school I worked at, or the kids I worked with.

These are kids who we were lucky to have show up to class each day, each failed by the traditional school system in some way. So rather than force feed them material they hated and knew they hated because they didn't get it before and were now so far behind they felt like failures, we taught them material which was at their grade level that didn't depend on areas they struggled with and was interesting to them.