[aleph_minus_one]

Since my neighbouring comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40983181) brings up a good point which I also would have brought up, I want to give another point:

At school, there existed some classmates who hated math as a school subject, but nevertheless loved my ramblings about mathematical topics (well, they were at least more interesting than some other school subjects). Nevertheless, I guess my style of motivating people to like and do math would not be loved by parents: it it rather of the style "I'll explain you stuff about plant and process engineering so that you can build a weed farm that will be harder to detect by the police" for math, i.e. explain what subversive stuff you can do if you know math. I don't want to go into the details here.

This is deeply motivating for particular kinds of kids (with punk traits) to become quite interested in mathematical topics, but of course many parents would hate it because my teaching methods for math turn the child into a bad citizen. ;-)

[glial]

I agree with your general point -- we should lean into kids' existing motivations rather than wring our hands that kids don't like to do rote practice. Doing anything else is a failing strategy, unless we devise new motivational environments.