I now do a lot of stats for my work (I'm a psychometrician), and as such, people see me as being good at math, but in school, I was a mess.
Here is the problem with math education: The way we teach it guarantees that only those with a cognitive predisposition to it will develop an interest. Math is just a tool. You can use it to do all sorts of really cool things, but you never even get to see those things in school. What you see is an entire evening shot solving quadratic equations for no reason whatsoever.
I actually enjoyed geometry and trig, and the former is still useful many times a year. I also enjoyed physics, which just just math.
Basically, we approach teaching math the way people used to approach teaching language (full disclosure: I teach foreign language--I develop standardized language tests, which is where I use a lot of math): memorizing conjugations, etc., rather than focusing on tasks that one can complete using what you know already, but which will stretch you and make you develop new skills. Language teaching has realized that the way to keep people who may not be predisposed to language (another very difficult, largely-left-brain activity that I actually did like in school) interested is to keep the application of skills front and center at all times. Not everyone will be a great mathematician or become highly proficient in a foreign language, but many more people than do now could do very, very well if classes were more focused on application than "here are 100 problems; they're due tomorrow."
Here is the problem with math education: The way we teach it guarantees that only those with a cognitive predisposition to it will develop an interest. Math is just a tool. You can use it to do all sorts of really cool things, but you never even get to see those things in school. What you see is an entire evening shot solving quadratic equations for no reason whatsoever.
I actually enjoyed geometry and trig, and the former is still useful many times a year. I also enjoyed physics, which just just math.
Basically, we approach teaching math the way people used to approach teaching language (full disclosure: I teach foreign language--I develop standardized language tests, which is where I use a lot of math): memorizing conjugations, etc., rather than focusing on tasks that one can complete using what you know already, but which will stretch you and make you develop new skills. Language teaching has realized that the way to keep people who may not be predisposed to language (another very difficult, largely-left-brain activity that I actually did like in school) interested is to keep the application of skills front and center at all times. Not everyone will be a great mathematician or become highly proficient in a foreign language, but many more people than do now could do very, very well if classes were more focused on application than "here are 100 problems; they're due tomorrow."