I just want to re-emphasize that numbers are an incredibly hard concept. It took well over five thousand years for human beings to go from naïve concepts of how numbers worked to a mature understanding, less than a century ago.

Even the basic mathematics that they teach kids in elementary school took thousands of years to develop after the concept of number first entered human consciousness.

Numbers are "simple" but such a deep concept, and essentially abstract. The amazing part is that a lot of people seem to be able to use numbers without too much effort, not that a lot of people have trouble grasping them immediately.

It is my belief that only a fairly small number of people are intrinsically unable to learn basic, mathematics, but that a lot of people would have needed - deserved! - extra time and help at some point not to fall behind, time and help they never got.

If you miss out on medieval history, it will not really impair your studies of World War II, but if you don't understand addition, you will never be able to understand algebra. Once you lose certainty in your mathematics, it will be very hard to catch up. (In my experience, it's usually fractions where people just get lost forever.)

Why mathematics isn't "learn at your own rate" I will never know. It's like they want to declare some group of people to be inferior. Unfortunately, this is my conclusion to a lot of the world's problems these days.