"A lot of math teaching is terrible, full of teaching formulas and abstract concepts, instead of the why's and how those abstract concepts relate to real life."
Well, I think your terrible description shows how the situation is more like "teaching math is hard".
One thing about math is that once you get it seems easy and so it's easy to assume the teach who failed to teach you before this was doing it wrong. The problem is different students fall off the wagon at different points. Too much abstraction? Too little abstract? Not enough "real world applications", too many "real world applications" (the horrid "word problems" etc).
I'll give you that one-to-one teaching is especially useful since there are so many ways to misunderstand maths.
I should apologize for saying "terrible". That was mean-spirited. The description seems a little foggy but it is hard to explain. I'd say math is full of teachers facing multiple pressures that results in them seeming terrible. They aren't terrible in scheme of things either.
Well, I think your terrible description shows how the situation is more like "teaching math is hard".
One thing about math is that once you get it seems easy and so it's easy to assume the teach who failed to teach you before this was doing it wrong. The problem is different students fall off the wagon at different points. Too much abstraction? Too little abstract? Not enough "real world applications", too many "real world applications" (the horrid "word problems" etc).
I'll give you that one-to-one teaching is especially useful since there are so many ways to misunderstand maths.