My daughters are out of college now, but 15 years ago they brought home textbooks and methods that made my physics major brain swim with a complete and abject ignorance of whatever it was they were trying to do.
I wasn’t allowed to teach them my way or they’d have been penalized for not following the method taught. I apologized to them and said I can solve the problem, but not using the method they want you to...because to me it’s much less efficient.
They got through...but I could tell for a period they thought I might not be as smart as they originally gave me credit for...which is exactly what I think the point is.
I got a degree in engineering, that new math (”investigative math” I think they called it) was REALLY a struggle until I figured out what they were trying to do. My one daughter could do it both ways, and my other daughter could only do it the normal way.
Her teacher called us in and said she was failing her math stuff (5th or 6th grade I think). We knew that she was getting the right answers, just not “investigating” them enough.
“Well - go ahead and fail her then. She’s getting the correct answers, and that’s good enough for us. Good enough for anybody I imagine.” (It was grade school - it’s not like they were going to flunk her entire year!)
Later on in older grades we would often say “Boy - aren’t you glad you know your math facts with these bigger problems?”