“...we assign ‘good intentions’ to the people who hate us, and hate the country.”
I still sub at the school I used to teach at. When I show the kids how I learned division (this was to 5th-grade kids—long division was expected to be mastered by the end of 4th grade when I was in school) the kids go, “Oh, that’s so easy!” or, “that’s how my dad tried to teach me”.
If you haven’t experienced ‘common core’ math, multiplication involves filling in tiny squares with numbers making a problem that should take 15 seconds to solve into a 10-minute art exercise.
And then there’s the jaggedness of it. New concepts that have nothing to do with one another are introduced each month. Mastering skills doesn’t happen. Believe it or not, first graders are introduced to fractions before they can reliably add.
What I can say is that my teachers in the 50s and 60s gave me a better education than what most kids today receive.
“I don’t know that the designers of modern math hated us and hated the country. It’s possible, but I doubt it.”
I guess we’re done with this discussion, then. You can’t fight an enemy if we don’t even see them as such.