I agree with you, but in the context of American education, the parent is right. Whenever anyone talks about improving American education, unless they specific

I agree with you, but in the context of American education, the parent is right. Whenever anyone talks about improving American education, unless they specifically say otherwise, they are talking about students who are struggling to learn. When they talk about relieving the students of the burden of calculation, they are not talking about the problem of kids who have mastered calculation problems being forced to do them over and over again ad nauseam. Nobody cares about those kids, because those kids get good grades and good test scores. What are the measurements that people talk about in education reform? The percentage of students with low scores. The percentage of students who drop out. The percentage of students who are not prepared for college. This is typical for discussion of American social issues; everything is problem-oriented and not success-oriented. Certain outcomes are labeled as failures, and reform is aimed at preventing them. Education reform is aimed at kids and schools who are "at risk" of producing undesirable outcomes. Kids who can do calculations accurately aren't even part of the conversation. So, when anyone talks about relieving kids of the burden of calculation, they aren't talking about people such as yourself who have learned beyond the point of diminishing returns. They're talking about the kids who still struggle to do the calculations correctly. They want to give up and move on with the kids' education before the kids have learned. This is linked to a perennial fantasy in elementary math education: that intuition is valuable and easy, while computation is hard and unimportant. I think this fantasy is wrong on both counts. Intuition is acquired only through hard work and practice, and intuition is only valuable if you are competent to subject your intuition to scrutiny. Intuition and calculation have to be yoked together like a pair of oxen, each pulling the other along when it falters. But as long as teachers believe that intuition is easy, there will be people willing to exploit the fantasy by promising to deliver easy, intuitive learning experiences without the useless drudgery of calculation.