Mis-math-ed: Things to make a parent go 'huh?'

What better way to start off the new year than with a rant against incomprehensible math textbooks? I don't know how it is in other states, but in California, the once sensible step-by-step approach to teaching math seems to have been replaced with a see-if-it-sticks approach. It's not clear to me when this change occurred, other than that it was sometime between my dimly recalled childhood in the Paleozoic Era and my own child's bumbling into the Mirkwood Forest that is modern mathematics. At the risk of sounding like an overbearing parent, I recall when we were taught math (back when we walked 10 miles through the snow and mud to get to school) that the teachers started with what was called "the basics" and made sure we had some command of the facts before moving on to things like, oh, Algebra or Calculus ... or Interdimensional Physics. This sort of teaching methodology apparently is passe. We've been homeschooling for years now, and each year the "new" math textbook has looked a lot like the previous year's. No sooner did our son begin comprehending multiplication than he was being thrust into graphs and algebraic equations. Each successive year brought more of the same, just torqued up a notch. I can't recall a year when the child was not assaulted by what previously was considered high-school-level math. I also can't recall a year when any of it really "stuck." Complicating matters is the fact that the writers of math textbooks are not content with speaking English, instead splattering their lessons with enough jargon to baffle anyone with less than an engineering degree. Far beyond simple concepts like numerator and denominator, students even in elementary school are assaulted with arithmetic means, multiplicative inverses, negative numbers, nonnegative integers, prime factorizations and radicands. It's enough to drive you crazy. It did Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, the author of "Alice in Wonderland." He was certifiable -- mad as a hatter, as he would say. By the time he got done with learning math, what had he learned? He was able to "prove" that two times two actually equals five: If x=1 and y=1 then 2 * (x2 - y2) = 0 and 5 * (x - y) = 0 therefore, 2 * (x2 - y2) = 5 * (x - y) Divide both sides of the equation by (x - y) 2 * (x + y) = 5 Plug in the values for x and y 2 * 2 = 5 And Christ Church College made him a professor of mathematics. Go figure.