Surely the understanding is the main purpose though. The value of being able to do long division is pretty minimal; the value of understanding how division actu

Surely the understanding is the main purpose though. The value of being able to do long division is pretty minimal; the value of understanding how division actually works and the fact that you can break down one hard problem into multiple easier sub problem is surely more important. I've seen this helping my son with addition: he knew to carry the one, but no one had explained what that actually meant. It was just a magic series of steps that gave the right answer, with no connection to related issues of place value etc that they then teach separately.