Is it way too early, or has it produced a generation or two (or three!) of mathphobic Americans? How many generations of avoiding rote memorization would it take to judge an alternative, in your view?

Many problems that people have with math seem to stem from not having internalized the most basic facts about addition and multiplication. If you don't know at least to 10 by 10, each tiny step of working through a problem will tend to be interrupted by counting. Fluency requires memorization.