We do and we try every which way to make it 'natural' and 'easy', sometimes with vaunted social goals like stemming drop-out rates. The reality is, at some point, you just have to sit down, put your head down, and power through. Sometimes, like you alluded, there are no shortcuts.
There are programming environments (sometimes even gamified) for learning, but if you want to use something to solve general purpose problems, you just have to learn it.
Perhaps this is a cultural difference then, efforts to make math 'natural' and 'easy' are not something my secondary education had. You could either do it or you could not and if you could not you were put in a class that had basically no math (or just some very simple math if you picked economics).
We do and we try every which way to make it 'natural' and 'easy', sometimes with vaunted social goals like stemming drop-out rates. The reality is, at some point, you just have to sit down, put your head down, and power through. Sometimes, like you alluded, there are no shortcuts.
There are programming environments (sometimes even gamified) for learning, but if you want to use something to solve general purpose problems, you just have to learn it.