People can communicate verbally or by exchanging images. The debate about arithmetic is a debate about the world of the past. The media have already decided their future shape and school is a joke, if not a horrific waste of talent of children. New Maths is a failure as it is part of school and it tries to explain verbal concepts instead of giving insights in real life. School messes up children's brains as it tries to explain things that become clear by watching, imitating and experimenting.
Visual logic is fundamentally different from verbal rhetoric.
The new insight is that sound can be sound, video can be video and communication can be direct. Within compulsory education, they are the most compulsory of all. But the more vigorously they are defended by school, the more their virtues should be questioned. When children are made to do their exercises, it is not all numeracy and literacy they are being taught. The fact that they have to submit to instructions from a teacher, to blindly follow orders, is a hidden message, subconsciously accepted and never challenged.