[Steve_Seattle]

"It teaches you that you can dissect numbers into easier to work with numbers to solve your problem."

It's a crappy way of doing it. What you propose is how algebra problems are solved, but they used to teach you the proper steps to do it. Now it seems like they want every third grader to somehow reinvent mathematics.

[discostu]

It’s a great way to do it. Let’s you do a lot more math in your head. It’s all about understanding that there are hard numbers to work with and there are easy numbers to work with but that you can make ALL numbers easy to work with if you understand that not stone concepts but clay concepts that can be manipulated that in fact the whole POINT of math is manipulating the clay. 3rd grade might be a little early for it, but maybe not, once you get skill at dissecting numbers big weird hairy numbers get a lot less intimidating.