How best to teach math to kids, pt. 2

Y'all might remember my posting from some weeks ago where a noted mathematics professor advocated that kids not be taught fractions in elementary school. Here's a story with the findings of a presidential panel on math education.

The panel found that kids should not only be taught fractions but they should be taught better and more strongly, along with basic math and geometry, to provide a solid base for algebra and higher math.

My beef is not with the's panel's recommendation-- I agree that strong basic math skills are essential to being able to do algebra and other higher math. My beef is that 1) math was taught to me as torturously as possible, 2) I had enough mean, bad or otherwise ineffecive teachers to last a lifetime and 3) I see now that I've struggled all the way up needlessly-- I just wasn't being taught right. (Except for trig and calculus-- notoriously dificult for most but simple for me since I had a phenominal teacher, and even chemistry wasn't too horrible is something I used to know how to do, because I had a good teacher.)

Maybe math education would be better if they didn't make us cram so many topics in together and focused on the more important of the algebraic topics, since a lot of the stuff they tortured us with in Algebra II, for example, I've never since used and no long remember how to do (along with trig, calc and chemistry--- oh well)

Or maybe I'm just biased and bitter, based on years of soul-crushing, discouraging failures in math-land. Maybe I just don't think that way and just don't get the "logic" of it (ok, I don't.) But I really hope some other kid doesn't go through what I did, and having it be largely for naught...