You are describing conservatism, personal, individual responsibility... Unfortunately, common core education has stripped 'common sense' away and 'we the people' in far too many numbers, rely upon a nanny government.
I don’t know anything about the much-beleaguered “common core” that requires this. It has suggested some questionable math techniques (maybe ones that are better suited to mental math than to paper math) but I see it scapegoated when it never presumed to command the entire academic cloud around it. Lazy, amoral teachers seem to be a worse problem.