The problem comes from the teachers, who themselves don't really know the subject. They know it as a set of rules, and thus thats how they teach it. Get teachers who actually know the material and the problem will mostly solve itself.
A more practical solution would be to change how the books themselves are written. Math is taught as just a set of rules to be memorized. We've lost the fact that math was motivated by real problems that real people had. We need to teach it in a problem-analysis-solution manner rather than "here are some rules and now here are some contrived problems for practice".
Comments
The problem comes from the teachers, who themselves don't really know the subject. They know it as a set of rules, and thus thats how they teach it. Get teachers who actually know the material and the problem will mostly solve itself.
A more practical solution would be to change how the books themselves are written. Math is taught as just a set of rules to be memorized. We've lost the fact that math was motivated by real problems that real people had. We need to teach it in a problem-analysis-solution manner rather than "here are some rules and now here are some contrived problems for practice".