I get your point- I think at least a few first graders are ready to go straight into multiplication, and wonder if much of the year is waiting for most/all the rest to catch up.
What also makes me think this is how much of the curriculum is measurement stuff -- time, money, temperature, weight, etc. Sure, this is important stuff to know in life, but it is in no way a building block of further math progress. They could just as easily pull it out as a separate subject, and let math go on its merry way. So stuffing all this into 2nd grade really does seem like a way to keep the math curriculum in a holding pattern until kids have matured a little.
