The fact of the matter is that math is difficult. Some don't find it so, but most do.

But even if one is pretty sharp, one single math class that is taught by a great teacher will not overcome 9 years of crappy math teachers. By the time you get to a great 11th grade teacher, most people have already decided that they suck in math and just try to get through it. The lowest possible "C" grade of 2.0 is good enough. No amount of "real world" examples will overcome this. In my classes, teachers tried to do this, but the little "trickery" to attempt to get it "relatable" was pretty transparent, and had nothing to do with me, because in my mind, I sucked in math no matter how teachers tried to present it in some kind of interesting way. It made zero difference, I had teachers that tried this. No go.

However, at one point in my life, somehow an academic trigonometry book came into my possession. This was when I was 35-years-old. I decided that there were people in my high school trig class that did well in it, and they were not THAT much smarter than me. So I decided that the problem was me. I then thought about it for a little while and decided that I never learned trig because I really didn't study the first 4 or 5 chapters, where they really teach the basics, and that I would not move on to the next sentence unless I completely understood the one I was on. It was slow slogging but that is what I did. And then, at the 5th chapter, bang, flash of light on the road to Damascus moment, and I understood all of trigonometry, all of it, in one single second. It was pretty wild, actually, I've never had that kind of revalation before or since, not like that, anyways. I thumbed through the rest of the book, stopping here and there, and confirmed that, yes, in fact I understood all of trigonometry in the book after only reading the first 5 chapters. It was simple. I didn't even need to read the rest of the book, because why? I already knew it deep down understanding.

I wish I'd have figured this out in high school about not moving on until you learned a single sentence before moving on to the next sentence, but I didn't, I just kinda skimmed the book as I went along. :(

I didn't find that having a great teacher or comparing it to practical examples helped me at all. What helped me is first, determination to understand, without that there is nothing. And second, to completely and totally understand each and every sentence and not move on until it is understood, even if it takes 5 hours of work to understand one sentence. And to do this, I went online and read other trig articles/tutorials because sometimes someone else explains it differently - by the way, this is also important - if you have a great teacher it doesn't matter because they only present it in one single way. Sometimes you have to read 5 different articles on it in order to get a 360 view of the issue to understand it from all sides, if that makes sense.

But the bottom line is that I didn't have a live teacher, at all. If one is truly motivated, one can learn it all directly from a well-written book, with using some alternate texts to help understand certain aspects.

I think the purpose of education is not to learn "things" or "skills" for jobs, as much as it is to help one become an autodidact - self learning. Not needing a teacher to help.

I think approach is true with all things. You have to understand the basics to understand the entire topic. As such, if you are in school, you should really pay attention and work extremely hard on the first 5 or 6 chapters and everything else for the year will be fairly simple. I don't know if this is for every subject, but it is for most. And if it is for most, that is good because then you will have the time to spend extra time for a class that is just fucking difficult every week.

You can learn anything on your own, especially now with the internet. I'm still blown away by people who said they never learned about finances in high school and it should be taught. That might be true but there is a plethora of online videos that teach personal finance. It's everywhere.