By the way, if you want a crazily large (14,000 words) but enormously wise lament on the state of mathematics in schools, click
here for the PDF.
It details why mindlessly teaching students mathematical forumulas (the
hows) is utterly useless without first helping students to
think through and explain (in their own words) the forumula. There's lot more than that in the rant though. It's probably the best educational lament I've read since the one on why the British university system's shagged (search for: The Decline and Fall of the British University - I've posted it here before).