You say "it's not about numbers, it's about learning how to think," but the truth is it's about both. Without the number skills and the memorization of all tho

You say "it's not about numbers, it's about learning how to think," but the truth is it's about both. Without the number skills and the memorization of all those number facts and formulas, a person is handicapped both in learning other subjects and skills and in succeeding and progressing in their work and daily life. The two concepts -- number skills and thinking skills -- go hand in hand. Thinking skills can't grow if the number skills aren't there as a foundation. That's what's wrong with the Common Core and all the other fads that are driving math education these days. They push thinking skills and shove a calculator at you for the number skills -- and you stall, crash and burn. The article brings out a good point about math anxiety. I have had to deal with it a lot in my years of teaching math. Sometimes my classroom has seemed so full of math anxiety that you could cut it with a butter knife. I read one comment that advocated starting our children out even earlier on learning these skills, but the truth is the root of math anxiety in most people lies in being forced to try to learn it at too early an age. Most children's brains are not cognitively developed enough in the early grades to learn the concepts we are pushing at them, so when a child finds failure at being asked to do something he/she is not capable of doing, anxiety results and eventually becomes habit, a part of their basic self-concept and personality. What we should instead do is delay starting school until age 8 or even 9. Some people don't develop cognitively until 12. Sweden recently raised their mandatory school age to 7 because of what the research has been telling us about this.