Back when I was in school I was reduced to tears because of my long division homework. The method made no sense. There was no logic. It was glorified guessing. And they would not tell me what I should do with the numbers that were left over. We would "get to that later".
My dad was home and sat down with me and in the course of one evening taught me how to divide. It was simple, it was clear, no guessing and what was left over was called the remainder. The next day I went in and flew through the worksheet and got a zero because I had the right answers but had not used the convoluted guessing method.
Dad went down and had a word with the teacher. Then he had a word with the principle. Then he took me out of that school.
The goal for decades in public education has been to keep kids from learning.
Mess them up at the basic level and you have ruined their best chance of rising up the social ladder.
“Mess them up at the basic level and you have ruined their best chance of rising up the social ladder.”
Bingo.
Another way they do this is by introducing too many concepts too early, as if that's a good thing ("hey, our 1st graders are learning fractions!) the result being that children are never made to MASTER a concept before moving on to the next thing.