When you apply that to proofs its awful. To use a gaming analogy the real world is a sandbox game where you can build it any way you want as long as you follow the rules, but in K-12 school, proofs are either for exact memorization, or crazy contrived things on rails that you're only supposed to solve the one correct way.
Sort of a perl "there is more than one way to do it" vs a python "there should only be one way to do it". Nothing inherently wrong with either other than if you and your educational system philosophically disagree, its going to go extremely badly for you.
I don't care about K-12, since I am an unAmerican. But I easily believe you if you say that the subject called `mathematics' in school is horrible. (And has nothing to do with `mathematics' proper.)
Sort of a perl "there is more than one way to do it" vs a python "there should only be one way to do it". Nothing inherently wrong with either other than if you and your educational system philosophically disagree, its going to go extremely badly for you.