That confused the hell out of me in first grade. They were trying to get us to understand comparisons, so they told us to pretend the symbols were alligators, and they wanted to eat the most hamburgers. But I only saw them as arrows, so I thought they wanted us to point to the highest number. I got every single one of those problems wrong!
I learned them because I started programming BASIC when I was 5. (I've recovered, thanks for asking.) I had it down pat, and then I was taught the mouth mnemonic in elementary school, and for some reason for weeks after that I had a hard time remembering which was which.
