I want to say yes, but I have two counters. One is that math nerds at school insisted on intimidating for the win and I just hated it.

The second is notation. I had a snob teacher who insisted on using Newton not Leibniz and at school in the 1970s this is just fucked. One term of weirdness contradicting what everyone else in the field did. Likewise failure to explain notation, it's hazing behaviour.

So yes, everyone benefits from maths. But no, it's not a level playing field. Some maths people, are just toxic.

There is this element of abstract mathematical thinking that many young people get exposed to at some point in the educational system but just never "get it" and they disconnect. This is where it goes awry as the gap only widens later on and its a pity.

Working with symbols, equations etc. feels like it should be more widely accessible. Its almost a game-like pursuit, it should not be alienating.

It might be a failure of educators recognizing what are the pathways to get the brain to adopt these more abstract modes of representing and operating.

NB: mathematicians are not particularly interested in solving this, many seem to derive a silly pleasure of making math as exclusive as possible. Typical example is to refuse to use visual representation, which is imprecise but helps build intuition.

But what is the difference between math talent and plug-n-chug math talent? That seems to be the most significant filter.

I agree with the sentiment of this. I think our obsession with innate mathematical skill and genius is so detrimental to the growth mindset that you need to have in order to learn things.

I've been working a lot on my math skills lately (as an adult). A mindset I've had in the past is that "if it's hard, then that means you've hit your ceiling and you're wasting your time." But really, the opposite is true. If it's easy, then it means you already know this material, and you're wasting your time.

I'm not a math teacher, but I do enjoy math, and I have helped several family members and friends with math courses.

I've long thought that almost all have the capability to learn roughly high school level math, though it will take more effort for some than for others. And a key factor to keep up a sustained effort is motivation. A lot of people who end up hating math or think they're terrible at it just haven't had the right motivation. Once they do, and they feel things start to make sense and they're able to solve problems, things get a lot easier.

Personally I also feel that learning math, especially a bit higher-level stuff where you go into derivations and low-level proofs, has helped me a lot in many non-math areas. It changed the way I thought about other stuff, to the better.

Though, helping my family members and friends taught me that different people might need quite different approaches to start to understand new material. Some have an easier time approaching things from a geometrical or graph perspective, others really thrive on digging into the formulas early on etc. One size does not fit all.