[ColinWright]

So here's the dilemma. People who see the beauty and elegance of mathematics are always going to go into something that exercises that, and will never go into teaching.

Why would anyone who is seriously good at lots of math go into teaching? Especially in the USA, UK, or other countries where teaching has such a low status. In many cases teachers are genuinely despised.

Why would anyone good at math ever go into teaching? No money, no status, no respect, no flexibility, no control, crushing hours, crushing workload ... why would anyone do that?!?

No wonder students are never exposed to the real beauty and elegance of mathematics.

[lordnacho]

Because one way to appreciate beauty is to show others. One of my math teachers in school had no kids, lived frugally. He could have retired a long time before I ran into him.

Instead, he gave me extra classes and put me on the math team. He spent lots of his own time to show me the interesting bits while also making sure I wouldn't get anything less than the top mark on the exams.

You're right though. It's not enough to rely on passionate people, there's not enough of them. I mean I like math too, and I'm not gonna be a teacher. You can't even send your own kids to school on a teacher's salary.

[monk_e_boy]

No teacher has time to do that. The workload is insane. Work from 7:30 to 3:30 in school. Then after school stuff with some kids for an hour, then staff meetings and a cup of tea (maybe a shit if you've got time). Commute home. 6pm cook and eat dinner. Bath kids, put to bed. 8pm plan lessons for next day, try to find some beauty in maths that works for the A* kids and the F kids and is in the curriculum.

Yeah. That's not happening often. Schools are broken.

[tgb]

Steven Strogratz is a teacher. He's also a popular math writer (he had a NYT column for a while).

[j7ake]

Agreed. He also mentors many PhD students, which is where a lot of the magic happens in terms of training.

[j2kun]

Yes but don't forget he is primarily a researcher (and an extremely famous one at that).

[wodenokoto]

By that logic no student is ever exposed to the real beauty and elegance of any subject.

[dagw]

If your degree/passion is for something like literature, history or music then teaching high school is, relatively speaking, one of the better jobs you can get where you can focus on your subject and use your degree. If someones degree/passion is in math, physics or programming then they simply have so many more options that the chances they end up in teaching is much lower.

[TeMPOraL]

You can be, just not in school - only at university level and above, when some time ago someone figured out a trick to combine research work with teaching responsibilities. This works well as long as there is no significant market demand for a given discipline.