My college math professors showed no pity to those students that were taught “new math” techniques. And there in lies the rub. When these chitlins get to college the math professors will throw all this crap out and teach them using the tried an true methods that have been handed by the great mathematicians over the centuries.
When I was in college we had to do the math by hand, and if we didn’t get the right answer we didn’t get credit. I’m talking about one question taking more than one page of calculations to answer.
I was helping a younger person in college with financial formulas and was surprised that they just let them use calculators that doesn’t even require the user to understand the principles of the formula or how it works.