It’s completely different than the way I was taught so I have to invest in figuring it out but it’s led them extremely quickly through multiplication & division and into algebra.
I’d characterize it as “multi-algorithmic”. They come at it from a variety of algorithms, assumedly so that each student can find one that works for them.
As someone who had to teach themselves a different algorithm than I was taught many painful years later this resonates.
Perhaps the rift was always there and you ended up in the lucky side of it?
But in reality the common core way explained the actual algorithm and the reason it worked so much better, and further, the only reason it appeared more complicated was because the people who were targeted by the meme already knew long division. If you took someone completely new to both methods, they’d find the more “complicated” algorithm far easier, because a large part of its complexity was explaining why the division worked, whereas long division was about memorizing a process.
If you actually understand the math picking up the common core methods is minutes of work at worst.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Core_State_Standards_In...
My 17 year old was struggling with the division algorithm they were teaching in Elementary school at the time (late 2000s). I can't remember the details but it was something I had never seen before that was a step up from throwing poop at the wall.
I showed her how to do long division and she still uses it to this day. It's simple and there is a history of work to easily identify errors.
The homework scene from The Incredibles 2 really hit home for me. I feel like book publishers development new methods or ways to teach the methods as a means to sell new editions of books, not because the new ways are better. This causes a rift in society because people no longer share a common understanding of a subject.