[ColinWright]

I disagree - in my experience the "answer getting" mentality is the largest barrier to doing "proper" math that there is. The students are unwilling to just try stuff to see what happens, because they think there's one way to do it, and one answer to find. They think they need to find the right process, apply it without making any stupid errors, get the answer, and move on.

That's a huge problem when you've trying to teach them about proofs, and kicking them out of that mentality is the biggest challenge in first year under-grad. This idea of letting them work for a limited time on an unsolved problem seems a useful approach to changing their attitude.

[superuser2]

>They think they need to find the right process, apply it without making any stupid errors, get the answer, and move on.

Perhaps because they've been conditioned for 12 years to believe that this is what "math" is.

[Nadya]

It also doesn't help that they hide details and sometimes straight up lie to students during those first 12 years. To avoid "confusing" them.

Students aren't usually taught subtraction is adding a negative number. Students aren't usually taught division is multiplying by a fraction. Students aren't usually taught that there are ways of counting outside of the decimal 'base 10' way of counting, or the advantages of counting in Octal, or how to count in Binary on your hands.

Math teachers love to say "2+2 does not always equal 4" but never explain that's only true in Base2-4 where the representation of "4" doesn't exist and it is represented as 100, 11, or 10.

So not only are we taught "there's always an answer". We're not taught other concepts and sometimes information is left out entirely until you reach a college level of mathematics - at which point all these lies, unexplained concepts, and "answer-seeking mentality" become a problem.