On primary math education

Yesterday I was pointed to an essay, a lament, on primary school math education in the US, written by a K-12 math teacher, that I want to share. It is well-written and makes some good points about teaching, which activity puzzles me. It also contains some entertaining and interesting dialogues, a la Perry, Lakatos, Feyerabend and Berkeley.

Keith Devlin also has a couple of columns about conceptual understanding and why multiplication isn't repeated addition: here, here, and here. [Edit: Duck points out that there is a good discussion of some of Devlin's stuff at Good Math, Bad Math.]