We teach algorithms in lieu of mathematics

Another day, another class. It was only mid-morning, but my pupil was struggling to arouse her synapses. The topic was familiar enough — she had practised scores of similar problems in the past— but at that moment the exercise might as well have been written in a foreign language.

‘I don’t remember how to do this,’ she admitted after a long silence.

‘You don’t have to,’ I responded. ‘It tells you how to do it.’

She looked back at the clean sheet lying on the table in front of her. It contained no…