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... or never reach their potential because there's a lot of random, mediocre noise masquerading as education in their environment. there are probably multiple people like Scholze aimlessly drifting in the US right now, working as unpaid interns or playing video games all day, people who are literally unaware of what they're missing.

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Right you are, and the unfortunate reality is no one particularly cares either. Common Core (in the US) adds to this in its focus not on the problem, not on the solution, not on the method(s) to approach the problem, but rather on a seemingly sensible and internally coherent explanation for arriving at some sort of (not necessarily correct) solution.

Please explain what you are talking about. If I were less charitable, I'd worry you were taking an uninformed potshot at a curriculum you haven't read up on.

What is "sensible and internally coherent explanation" if not a method to approach the problem?

In the IMO, points are awarded for sensible and internally coherent explanations (commonly called "proofs").

My early fear of mathematics has a lot to do with its being taught by permanently enraged adults who seemed to view the topic as an excuse to work themselves into paroxysms of ultra-violence. I am glad to see that percussive pedagogy has fallen out of fashion.

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