Conversely I have been immediately impressed with the way my first grader is being taught math.
It’s completely different than the way I was taught so I have to invest in figuring it out but it’s led them extremely quickly through multiplication & division and into algebra.
I’d characterize it as “multi-algorithmic”. They come at it from a variety of algorithms, assumedly so that each student can find one that works for them.
As someone who had to teach themselves a different algorithm than I was taught many painful years later this resonates.
Perhaps the rift was always there and you ended up in the lucky side of it?
I remember when the common core debates were taking place, one of the memes running in parenting circles was a comparison of long division vs how common core taught division, and how much more “complicated” the common core version was.
But in reality the common core way explained the actual algorithm and the reason it worked so much better, and further, the only reason it appeared more complicated was because the people who were targeted by the meme already knew long division. If you took someone completely new to both methods, they’d find the more “complicated” algorithm far easier, because a large part of its complexity was explaining why the division worked, whereas long division was about memorizing a process.
My little brother was always better at Math than me. Whenever he tried to show me how to do something it was different than how our teachers showed us. He was really good at figuring out a method that made more sense for him, and it certainly worked for him.
It’s completely different than the way I was taught so I have to invest in figuring it out but it’s led them extremely quickly through multiplication & division and into algebra.
I’d characterize it as “multi-algorithmic”. They come at it from a variety of algorithms, assumedly so that each student can find one that works for them.
As someone who had to teach themselves a different algorithm than I was taught many painful years later this resonates.
Perhaps the rift was always there and you ended up in the lucky side of it?