I'm saying young children shouldn't be led to believe that that's what math is. People should probably learn how to do basic operations, but it should have much, much less emphasis than it does now, and it would be much more useful to teach intuitions regarding how to stop when you've made an error, how to estimate, which operations useful when, etc. As an example of what I mean, my mom is an accountant and I've caught her on at least one occasion multiplying a monthly interest rate by 12. That's an OK method to estimate, but it's pointless when you're doing it on a calculator anyway.
I'm saying young children shouldn't be led to believe that that's what math is. People should probably learn how to do basic operations, but it should have much, much less emphasis than it does now, and it would be much more useful to teach intuitions regarding how to stop when you've made an error, how to estimate, which operations useful when, etc. As an example of what I mean, my mom is an accountant and I've caught her on at least one occasion multiplying a monthly interest rate by 12. That's an OK method to estimate, but it's pointless when you're doing it on a calculator anyway.