Math has been the bane of people’s existence since late antiquity (actually, probably since even earlier). People all over the world — children and adults alike — struggle with it and constantly complain about it. Why? There are two critical reasons why math is so difficult: structural deficit and accumulated advantage.
Math is a highly foundational discipline. You need to have an understanding of addition before moving on to multiplications, a solid grasp of algebra before learning calculus. If you have one weakness in mathematics, sooner or later, it will be exposed, and you will struggle because of that. Math is so difficult for students because they don’t have the proper foundation, and if you don’t understand the basic concepts, there’s no way you’ll understand the subtle nuances of advanced mathematics.
The problem today is that many struggling students have a lack of understanding in multiple areas — a structural deficit. Maybe they were sick one day and missed the lesson explaining the intuition linking Riemann sums and integrals. If they never caught up and properly learned what an integral represented, they would have been in trouble for the rest of their math careers. Now imagine having multiple holes scattered throughout your math knowledge, and only then can you begin understanding the nightmare that many students face today. It is a structural deficit in mathematics intuition and understanding.