on multiplying decimals

This afternoon the 5th grader who I am tutoring brought a math work sheet to our session.  His class is learning to multiply decimals.  Now, I am pretty ancient but I do remember how to do this - at least the way we used to do it when I was young.  But as we worked through the problems I realized that he was being taught the same process that the sixth graders I taught seven years ago (I was a substitute teacher in sixth grade math for three months) were taught in their text book.  Their way works but it feels to me like it just complicates the issue.  I was taught to multiply the two numbers (for instance 3.2 x .47) like you would multiply whole numbers then place the decimal so you have the same number of digits to the right of the decimal as the number of digits behind the decimal points in the problem.  So in this example the answer would be 1.404.  Simple, right?  Now they are taught to line up the decimals, add zeros where necessary to make everything line up, then multiply. The problem I see with this system is that students tend to get the columns out of alignment and then the answer is wrong.  I'm sure there is a logical reason for this "new and improved" process and I didn't try to retrain my student, but why, why, why complicate things??