Clearly, I'm not talking about a learning disability, but a dependency on technology simply because it's easier (i.e. calculators existed back when I was in school and most of the kids wanted to know why they couldn't use them). The problem is when you don't have a calculator on hand, you won't be able to do any math and I can at least see that perspective as in the old days we didn't all have iPhones in our pockets (I did have a Casio Databank Watch for a long time that had a calculator in it, though).
But from what people at work that have kids right now tell me about the current math methods, no one memorizes math tables anymore which from my perspective means everyone's counting on their hands and toes or using a calculator anyway, which defeats the point from what I learned. In college, I started doing long division in my head even because it saved time (I needed my scientific calculator for graphing and other things and having two calculators with me got to be a pain too).
I once had a Calculus 2 teacher in college that couldn't teach the damn class and 3/4 the class dropped including me and I never had so much as a "C" in my entire life to that point. I had to change majors since he was the ONLY teacher teaching Calc2 in the Science college at the time (I switched from Computer Science to Electronic Engineering Technology which was in the tech college instead and had different teachers). Oddly most of the teachers in the science college were foreigners and hard to understand with their accents, etc., while every single teacher in the tech college was an American and other than a Tennessee accent, they were pretty easy to understand. But that was not the case with the Calc2 teacher (he was an American). He was just a bad teacher. I had to drop his class or I would lose my scholarship which required a certain grade average (and I never even got a "C" in 7 years of college, let alone an "F"). Like I said, 3/4 the class dropped and I remember hearing him telling some other teacher out in the hall how we were all lazy and stupid or something. Yeah, I took Calc2 a two years later in the tech college (they didn't use it until year 3) and that teacher was available before class to answer homework questions, etc. and the bottom line is that I got 100% on the final and an A in the class so to me that proved it was the teacher that was the problem not me. Math was never my strongest subject, but a lousy teacher doesn't help anyone learn anything.
I agree how important a teacher Can be. This guy was toxic. He'd walk into class, see me sitting at the front and in front of the class say "you're still here? Why don't you just drop out already"
I can't explain it, but math causes me distress. Even basic adding with two digit numbers, will make my brain go into pure confusion mode. 7+26? And suddenly it's like I'm reading ancient hieroglyphs and the numbers become absolutely meaningless in my brain. I know what it's supposed to do. I get the logic of the math and how it works. But I still can't do it in my head. I have always had problems like this since I was a kid. Even identifying currency has been troubling for me. It's haunted me my whole life.
And this teacher knew it since I had been tested for a disability the year before and we know he got that information relayed to him. By grade 9, I was reading and writing at a college level. I was doing logic problems at university levels. But my math was grade 2 levels