[rayiner]

> (and having their teachers be afraid of math)

This is a big one. I was in sixth grade when my science teacher told me that the boiling point of water was 132F, because she thought you added 32 to convert from Celsius to Fahrenheit.

This problem runs all the way down, from teachers colleges to the kinds of people who apply to be K-12 teachers. That fearing math is okay and normal is pervasive in the culture and it’s not clear to me you can even do anything about it other than implement gating math credentials for teachers that would exclude a huge fraction of teaching school graduates.