CC has long appeared to me as an issue of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Same chairs, same boat, same iceberg.
If
ever a statement were worthy of gilt calligraphy and a frame...
though I like MoN's assessment of the situation, too. It makes no sense to spend all that time in elementary worrying about one-to-one correspondence and moving from physical manipulatives into symbolic math if you just IGNORE the 'why this works' part and never again pull out to look at "big picture" stuff.
Sheesh. No wonder kids loathe and fear geometry and calculus now. It's all a Busby Berkeley spectacular with dancing variables and symbols to most of them by that point. [sighhhh]
