[ghaff]

One of the problems, especially but not exclusively at the high school level, is that you often haven't been exposed to the math (or other foundational information) that you need to derive things from more or less first principles. Physics is probably the most obvious example. You need Calculus to derive many of the formulae in high school physics but the average student probably hasn't had Calculus yet so they're just equations to memorize.

[Wowfunhappy]

This is why I think a lot of pre-collegiate curricula is misguided. The ultimate goal of a high school science or math course should be to teach logic and critical thinking ("learning how to learn"). If a student doesn't have the ability to understand why a formula works, we should take a hard look at why we're teaching it, even if that means radically rethinking which subjects are offered.

[ghaff]

I don't disagree.

Math is the real challenge though. When I was in business school I tutored a group of students who were... struggling. They simply lacked the ability to handle things like basic graphs in economics, solving equations, never mind the most simple differentiation to find a maxima/minima. It was a frustrating experience. I couldn't make up for a general lack of even high school math.

And read any number of books out there on first year bschool experiences and you'll find similar.

There are absolutely successful people who are in that category. But Math is a major roadblock for many people.