I think very often the most crucial information is not given when teaching people complex topics:
- Why is this important? What problem does it really solve?
- Why this solution and not another one?
- What do I really need and use this for in practise?
To realize it is not that complex at all you have to be able to sort it into a box first. Many teachers may take a big effort to break the complexity down into small pieces, but if you don't know where the whole thing fits this can break the whole teaching effort.
I will never forget when I realized my (really bad) maths teacher managed to not tell us the perfectly good and understandable reason why integrals are a cool thing that solve real problems for a year of needing to deal with them. She really broke down the steps etc, but totally forgot to tell us what the thing was actually for, and why the stuff we already learned couldn't be used to solve certain problems.
- Why is this important? What problem does it really solve?
- Why this solution and not another one?
- What do I really need and use this for in practise?
To realize it is not that complex at all you have to be able to sort it into a box first. Many teachers may take a big effort to break the complexity down into small pieces, but if you don't know where the whole thing fits this can break the whole teaching effort.
I will never forget when I realized my (really bad) maths teacher managed to not tell us the perfectly good and understandable reason why integrals are a cool thing that solve real problems for a year of needing to deal with them. She really broke down the steps etc, but totally forgot to tell us what the thing was actually for, and why the stuff we already learned couldn't be used to solve certain problems.