I think that learning some basic by-hand computation skills is useful. The question is where do you draw the line. The current practice seems to be to stop at l

I think that learning some basic by-hand computation skills is useful. The question is where do you draw the line. The current practice seems to be to stop at long-division. To me this seems a reasonable place to stop. There are hand methods to do more complicated calculations, such as computing square roots, that are not taught in school, which is probably fine. I don't think leaving out long-division would save that much time, and I think it's a good mental exercise for kids to have to learn a fairly complex algorithm. If I could suggest one improvement, it would be that in later advanced math courses, they returned to long-division and explained at a deeper level why that algorithm works.