Why does everyone hate math instead of English? - >not science or math

DDBCAE CBAADCBE said:
For me English was always easier because I could mostly sleep through class and still generally absorb everything that was said or just use context clues and common sense to fake my way through to the right answers. Meanwhile math on the other hand requires you to actually pay attention. It's a strict and joyless sort of work that demands your focus and will punish you fiercely for even a small slip up.
Click to expand...
You're the polar opposite of me, lol.
 
  • Like
Reactions: AtheistWestonChandler
Math can require excessive memorization, the classes always assign too much homework every class day, and math requires fairly mechanistic thinking biology isn't naturally best at.

Meanwhile, English is closer to how organic beings think.
 
I couldn't git gud at Maths. Also classes for Maths and Science were often boring and seemed to focus more on rote memorization and grinding worksheet after worksheet rather than cultivating logical thought until my final year of high school.

I liked English and other adjacent subjects a lot because I overthink. Subtext, inference and contextual clues are practically human's bread and butter, especially in daily life if you don't want to seem like a sperg or a weirdo. Also I liked being creative. Maths in my school didn't really let you be creative because they advocated for one true and honest method.

Weirdly enough, I was the type of person to like English and Science, despite how Science and Math are so closely linked.
 
ToroidalBoat said:
Math can require excessive memorization, the classes always assign too much homework every class day, and math requires fairly mechanistic thinking biology isn't naturally best at.

Meanwhile, English is closer to how organic beings think.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I've essentially already posted this in this thread 50 times, but for me everything up to and including the majority of algebra ii was just common sense. Calculus was when I really had to start learning formulas and methods.
 
  • Feels
Reactions: ToroidalBoat
I'm the odd autist out, i love reading yet hate books (i like to read using electronics due to features allowing my mild dyslexia to not affect me) and i hate math, i loved everything else in school but fuck math.
 
I've been bad at math my whole life, and have an issue with numbers more than words. I prefer English more because I've always liked reading and figuring out sentences, and maybe me learning how to read at a young age made it easier.
 
FuckedUp said:
You're the polar opposite of me, lol.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I never found school very stimulating and ended up skipping most of my classes about as soon as I realized that the system had no real intention of teaching us anything new. I still remember my algebra teacher trying to explain an equation and he said something at the beginning like "Okay, for this problem the letter B will equal 6 and we need to solve for Y". I looked at him and I said "Alright, but why does B equal 6 in particular?" He couldn't give me an answer for that and it was at that point that I realized that like everyone else there he had no interest in teaching us to learn but rather teaching us to listen. I quickly said I had to go to the library and then told the librarian I was going back to class. No one suspected that I had just walked home.
 
Math is much like learning a whole new language you have to keep practicing to understand it, that's why Math isn't as preferred as opposed to English. To me English is something that most are familiar with and you get to learn intriguing of pieces literature, proper grammar, poetry, biographies, etc. Math is a bit more black and white in comparison. Though I do envy those who'd find abstract math interesting.
 
Last edited:
  • Agree
Reactions: Gay_Frog
FuckedUp said:
Calculus was when I really had to start learning formulas and methods.
Click to expand...
I always struggled in math. Especially fractions and algebra.

I think I liked the sciences that aren't math heavy better than English or math, although one English teacher managed to make Romeo and Juliet seem interesting - and no essays I can recall.
 
I hated math in school because they never explained *why* something worked the way it did or what it was even used for, just how you did it. That kind of thinking doesn't work for me. Hated english too because all the teachers I had for it were massive cunts except for one. Always enjoyed History, Economics, and Government courses in school much more. Those and PE, so much as to take it for 3 periods in a row one year, and that was with block scheduling so the entire day was PE 2 days out of the week.
 
Math is concrete for everyone who isn't delving deep into it and it's tedious.
English for most people is skim a book/piece once and then write about it, being able to bullshit a good chunk of it. Especially with the internet nowadays.

People also don't see any utility from math so just don't want to do it, then by the time they do see its utility can't be bothered to play catch up.
 
Math is regarded as the universal language by people who love numbers and equations. English is spoken nearly everywhere since more people from different countries come to U.S. to want to speak it. If anything, I’ve learned more from READING math books and analyzing them after graduating from school than actually taking courses in it.

It requires a lot of rational thinking and like most others have said, it’s all about figuring out the right answer to the problem at hand, unlike English where there are different amount of ways to speak and write.
 
As reflected in most of the posts in this thread, for years and years (all of compulsory education and well into college), math is mechanical, concrete, linear, arbitrary and without motivation or sometimes even obvious practical application, tedious... I haven't been to this point or anywhere near it, but I have a vague understanding that deep into the study of math lies a trove of fascinating mystery-solving and the use of this arcane and elegant language to understand and express it. It can be a wonderful and enriching thing, so I hope. Not just "how are we going to use this later" but the really good shit, kind of like the reason a person might be deeply motivated to study philosophy or psychology for their own enrichment and elucidation about the world and their existence. The way math is taught is castrated and demotivating. It needs a fundamentally different approach in which people are actually shown why they should give a shit, and again, I don't just mean like "it'll be useful if you want to be an engineer or something".
 
Last edited:
Almost all mathematics in school is learning how to be a human computer for tasks that are almost entirely useless outside of schooling (like applying the rational root theorem to a polynomial, which nobody except autistic people like). Most mathematicians, when asked about public mathematics education, will moan about how narrow and shit it is (see A Mathematician's Lament). Topics in mathematics/mathematics adjacent fields like game theory, probability, and statistics would be infinitely more helpful to almost everybody, but sadly we don't teach those things, and perhaps some of the people who dislike the drudgery of "math" could find themselves better at those subjects. When most people say "math" they really mean equation solving, finding-the-zero, and number juggling, which is a pitifully small subset of mathematics.

English education in the U.S. is terrible also, but unlike mathematics there isn't a way to calculate a right or wrong answer to most questions you can pose in English, so people probably enjoyed that flexibility when it doesn't exist in Algebra. English is a lot more flexible, so the only time you have dumb tests like testing you on what happened to so-and-so in Scene such-and-such in this play is when you have a bad teacher, while in mathematics everyone is forced in teaching in the one bad way.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: totse
Account said:
Almost all mathematics in school is learning how to be a human computer for tasks that are almost entirely useless outside of schooling (like applying the rational root theorem to a polynomial, which nobody except autistic people like). Most mathematicians, when asked about public mathematics education, will moan about how narrow and shit it is (see A Mathematician's Lament). Topics in mathematics/mathematics adjacent fields like game theory, probability, and statistics would be infinitely more helpful to almost everybody, but sadly we don't teach those things, and perhaps some of the people who dislike the drudgery of "math" could find themselves better at those subjects. When most people say "math" they really mean equation solving, finding-the-zero, and number juggling, which is a pitifully small subset of mathematics.

English education in the U.S. is terrible also, but unlike mathematics there isn't a way to calculate a right or wrong answer to most questions you can pose in English, so people probably enjoyed that flexibility when it doesn't exist in Algebra. English is a lot more flexible, so the only time you have dumb tests like testing you on what happened to so-and-so in Scene such-and-such in this play is when you have a bad teacher, while in mathematics everyone is forced in teaching in the one bad way.
Click to expand...
I'm no mathematician but the math up through high school and ultimately into college for most is so basic. Most people can barely do that so I don't see how they're going to fare beyond that into the more "fun" math.
I think showing people what you can do with math or what has been done with math before is a good way to build intrigue but you still have to build people up to that level.

Like showing students why calculus is important before they even get to that level by showing how you can pretty accurately measure the distance of a star light years away with basic instruments or something like that would be more fun than saying "hey you can find out how fast a ladder is falling!" which most students won't care about so won't get excited for.
I haven't been in high school for awhile but I remember most people looked at math through a lens of "When will I ever use this?" and English was simply an easier course so they didn't worry about it. But to get to the "fun" math you need to be able to solve for X in all sorts of ways.
 
I won't harp on it any more than what's been already said, but people aren't going to use anything but the most basic of math in their everyday lives. And that's part of the reason I don't like it too, I mean I'm not going to use algebra to know how much my groceries cost.
 
I'm Discalculic. It's like Dyslexia, but for math. My math teachers in high school thought I just couldn't be fucked until suddenly I was presented with algebra and was doing university level equations without breaking a sweat. They treated me like an undiscovered genius for like, a week and then decided that if I could do algebra at levels even they struggled with, I was just SUPER lazy with numbers. I hate math and love English because math teachers are generally bitter, coffee smelling old cunts whilst English teachers are usually nice older ladies who like Shakespeare and Dickens.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: Shadfan666xxx000
Jewelsmakerguy said:
I won't harp on it any more than what's been already said, but people aren't going to use anything but the most basic of math in their everyday lives. And that's part of the reason I don't like it too, I mean I'm not going to use algebra to know how much my groceries cost.
Click to expand...
Algebra is probably the most useful day-to-day math for most people. It's what you do in any spreadsheet. Most of my old friends can't even use spreadsheet software outside of using it as a text file where they manually move data around.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: FuckedUp and Gunt.Inc
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back