Sounds like typical SV hype tbh. Who needs to do number arithmetics anyway? Most math involves working with symbols (x, y, etc.) for which this number system is useless. And as for actual number arithmetics: calculators.
Actually doing arithmetic is mostly useless in the modern world where everyone has phones, but teachers all seem convinced you still need to learn and understand it.
Symbolic math is also not directly used much(or at all) by most non-STEM people, since there's an app for almost everything, but we still learn it even though it's a specialist kind of thing.
Plus, if the kids are excited about it, maybe it's somehow relevant in the region in a way that's not obvious to people in the city, the same way that tradespeople actually like fractional units for some reason I don't really understand.
