What WAS the purpose of teaching new math in grade schools, early 70s? Usefulness?

Question

"Elfs", "twelfs", "base 7", and similar garbage. Tom Lehrer's song didn't come to my attention till AFTER bad math phobia/hatred had set in, bigtime.
Why were they trying to teach NM to grade school kids, what on earth can you do with it (practically speaking), and can any math whizzes here give me a VERY, VERY, VERY simple grade-school-level explanation (remember, math dummy here!) of how the $%#$# thing is **supposed** to work? I'm still wondering, years later.
This seemed like a likely section to post to....thanks, all.

Answer 1

This was a huge mistake to try. A few kids, me being one of them, and a friend of mine, were able to teach ourselves our own math methods of multiplication, division, etc. This stuff is for the wiz kids who can do it on their own. To this day I don't do math like "normal" people - I can do it faster in my head using my own shorthand methods than my students can on their calculators. But whoever the idiot was that figured that you can take wizardry and apply it to your standard, everyday snot-nosed student in elementary school was off his rocker. Don't try to have anyone explain it to you. If you're not a wizard enough to figure out your own faster, more accurate way of doing math, no one else is going to teach it to you. "New Math" was a failed educational experiment.

Answer 2

the only ingredient it did became confuse us all. Older math instructors have been coaching something that they had on no account discovered. elementary solutions took a complicated formula to reach at. So as quickly as you found out the respond the undemanding way, you had to place it into the formula. basically yet differently of taking something elementary and making it so complicated no one might desire to are conscious of it.

Answer 3

Every so often, even though we don't WANT to do it, you must reinvent that wheel.