Mathematics and reality - teachers please?

[dmaivn]

I wonder if teachers should always try to teach mathematics to the kids in a way that is closest to reality. I personally feel that mathematics should be taught as close to reality as possible so that kids can see how mathematics relates to real life issues and problems.

One example is how the part of ratio called proportion was taught 30 years ago

2 --------- 4
5 ----------?

Without explaining enough, teachers just told me to do this

5 x 4 / 2

This gave correct result but kids did not understand anything!

In modern time, many teachers still teach division of fraction this way

2/3 divided by 4/5 is 2/3 timed with 5/4

They just tell the kids to flip (get the reciprocal) of the divisor then change to "time"!

Many teachers seem to teach mathematics like rules that need to be rote-learned. Or perhaps this is the best way to teach young kids in primary school level? I fear that this kind of teaching make them loose the basics.