Honestly if we had kept "New Math" we'd have had made life simpler for the coming generations of programmers/computer scientists. The main changes were introdu

Honestly if we had kept "New Math" we'd have had made life simpler for the coming generations of programmers/computer scientists. The main changes were introducing boolean algebra, matrices, other tools at a younger age, and even touched on octal and binary. It also did reduce the emphasis on arithmetic to spend time on other areas of math. This completely freaked out parents who had no understanding of the math that the kids were learning, but a lot of the response was reactionary anger at strange seeming ideas, and general anger centered on the notion that kids should only learn arithmetic by rote learning as the rest of math is pointless like the "Johnny Can't Add" book. I have little to say about Common Core, since I haven't been following it, though I am seeing a lot of the same knee-jerk reactionary criticisms that are grounded in a sense of traditionalism and desire to focus on rote learning rather than any understanding of math, which we should be careful about.