NavList:

Having tried teaching at High School, Community College & college and adult education (navigation) I've learned that I only assist someone's learning.

I've been struck with the thought that all learning is memorization and that we differ in the kinds of things and ease with which we remember various kinds of knowledge. Part of the difference in ease of remembering has to do with background knowledge, the basic stuff you remember. I'm not surprised that education professionals want to find magic changes to expand the percentage of people that are comfortable with math, but I doubt that ignoring rote learning of fundamental math operations (add, subtract, multiply and divide ) will succeed in doing that.

As for Navigation, I think that an inability to do fundamental math operations will stop a person from learning to do CN or conceive a numerical position description such as Lat and Long. Tabular methods may use logarithms and sine/haversines but people with no understanding of those things can and do learn CN. Similarly calculator solutions can be taught as a sequence of buttons to push. And if one continues the practice then all well and good.

But if you are away from practicing then a broader background helps in recovering the methods.

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