I don't find her case compelling at all.
I thought that her point about the abusurdity of devoting an entire long chapter called "Calculators" was very compelling. This was 30+ pages in both the 4th and 5th grade textbooks.
I was also convinced of the foolishness of devoting even longer chapters to geography lessons in in EM textbooks. And of course I have to say this: geography is an important subject. But it just isn't math (which is why they call it "geography" and not "math").
I was equally impressed by the quotation from the EM teacher's guide. To paraphrase, the guide announced that expecting children to master something like division is just asking too much. Besides, calculators are better!
If you have a better algorithm for long division, I'd love to see it. It would be great. But IMO, the TERC & EM methods simply call for guesswork, are inefficient, and ineffective with large numbers.
