The sparkle in his eyes as he speaks makes it obvious just how much he cares about his daughter. So when he got a letter from Daisy’s teacher after school, he jumped on the problem with verve.

Phil’s first instinct was to try what he calls, “the kitchen table approach.” The particular math that Daisy had been struggling with were multiplying fractions and long division. That evening, he sat down with Daisy - Izzy snuggling under her chair - and opened up a text book. That’s when he realized math had changed.

“I'm looking at the guide and I'm going and I'm desperate to work out what it's telling me. My brain can't process it. My brain's going back to 1986… I can't even reconcile, you know, the two methodologies.”

Surrounded by fresh notebooks, sharpened pencils, and a text book that reads to him like hieroglyphics, Phil was dumbfounded. His daughter knew there was something wrong right away.