[atratus]

I have looked over some of the common core material given to both early grade school and middle schoolers and its very clearly attempting to teach abstract reasoning. There is alot of word problems that ask how to decouple a concept from the concrete values calculated in a previous step. Most people from older generations are not going to see the value in this... parents (and teachers) need to know there is much more to math than arithmetic

[ploxiln]

Isn't it much easier to just use "x" and "y" instead of strange terms like "subtraction stories"?

I always did quite well in math, but sitting there at the back of the class messing around with stuff at the end of the book, I found that teachers tried so damn hard to make the content easier, and in the process made it harder. I could figure out how what they were saying corresponded to the material, because I already knew the material, but could not see how anyone else would understand it. Few did.

That said, "Common Core" is probably fine, as usual the implementation quality is just much more important than any particular methodology. (just like "object oriented programming" etc).