(1/2) Helping my seventh grader with his math homework (consisting of half a dozen questions like “15 is what percent of 40?”) fills me with an aversion best described not as math-phobia but as “misomathy”. I’m not afraid of these kinds of problems; I just intensely dislike them.
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I think my antipathy increases when I’m faced with a sequence of routine problems all of the same type. I’m okay with one or two of them, but a whole swarm of them? Ick.
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On the other hand: the ability to tolerate drudgery is an important life skill, because even when the long-term goals are of your own choosing, there are bound to be short-term tasks that aren’t fun. Being able to surmount feelings of boredom and distaste are part of *character*.
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Tolerating boredom and misery is morally wrong. The desire to obviate these ills has driven most of human progress. If a mathematical problem requires a repulsive amount of drudgery, then it is not a good problem (and contrapositively.) There's a better way (or a better problem.)
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