Can you help a child with math homework ?

The old way:

The new way:

From NPR:

If you're a parent of a certain age, your kids' homework can be confounding. Blame it on changes in the way children are taught math nowadays — which can make you feel like you're not very good with numbers...

That's largely to reflect the different needs of society," he says. "No one ever in their real life anymore needs to — and in most cases never does — do the calculations themselves."

Computers do arithmetic for us, Devlin says, but making computers do the things we want them to do requires algebraic thinking. For instance, take a computer spreadsheet. The computer does all the calculations for you automatically. But you have to write the macros that tell it what calculations to do — and that is algebraic thinking.

"You cannot become good at algebra without a mastery of arithmetic," Devlin says, "but arithmetic itself is no longer the ultimate goal." Thus the emphasis in teaching mathematics today is on getting people to be sophisticated, algebraic thinkers...

"Teachers have a very difficult task, and the task they have now is even more difficult, because in previous generations they could assume that in many cases the parents could help."