I realize that most parents, even here, REFUSE to accept the fact that school curricula are intended to FAIL, particularly math Curricula, which is why I don’t even bother commenting on most ‘education’ related articles, as I always get some nutcase convinced that the school he sends his kids to is in the 1% that hasn’t been corrupted. LOL!
The reason why math was taught ONE WAY from counting to calculus for 99% of recorded history was that ONE WAY worked best. The Leftists who took over education FULLY understand that, which is why they changed it. It’s THAT SIMPLE.
I believe that the new ways of doing math are primarily there so people with PhDs in math education can write papers of dubious quality about them and new textbooks can be published. Without the new techniques, the old books can serve until they fall apart and new editions need only be published to remove dated references every couple of decades (what’s a record and why do I need to calculate how many times it would spin in five minutes?)
They did the same with reading and phonics. They started using “whole language” and kids learned the first thousand most common words by sight. They tried that when my kids were in school.
Fortunately I had been teaching my children phonics since they were two and able to discern letters. They could read by the time they got to kindergarten.