All children should learn their times tables by age 11

[mikey4444]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31079515

Isn't this from the school of the *** obvious ? When was it not policy that kids should learn their times tables before they go to Secondary school ?

[jim360]

Incidentally I do wish people would stop blaming calculators for people's inability to do arithmetic. Even before calculators you had tables, especially the log tables, that did the same sort of job really (ie automated the calculation). And there were still people who were useless at number work. Always have been, always will be.

[factor-fiction]

I agree on that too, jim. Weaker students will usually get the wrong answer even with a calculator if the problem involves more than 2 steps or gives a decimal answer

[vulcan42]

yes without learning the basics we're lost in more advanced calculations and as already said, the calculator has a lot to answer for. I'v mentioned this before but it still amazes me.
Buying £25 worth of petrol I offered the assistant 2x £20 notes. The assistant entered the details into the till, looked at it for a moment, looked at me and said" according to this I have to give you £150 change", followed by the bit that still amazes, "is that right?".

[jim360]

Again, though, that's not really the fault of the calculator. Never blame technology if it's used badly -- it's because the person using it doesn't understand what they are doing. That lack of understanding would exist with or without the calculator.

[naomi24]

//Asking people to know the 12x table by rote shows a certain amount of backward thinking as it's not at all necessary. Far more important than knowing 8x12 = 94 is knowing how to get to the answer and what it even means, and rote learning often loses sight of understanding what the heck you are saying.//

I don’t understand Jim’s problem with this. Having instant access to answers through learning by rote can never be considered a useless asset – and it never prevented me from learning the rest, so his argument about what is ‘far more important’ is irrelevant. We can do both, you know. His attitude reminds me of allegedly forward-thinking teachers who maintain that as long as the ‘ideas’ within a written piece are there spelling isn’t important, never considering that an inability to spell renders it impossible to complete tasks that shouldn’t need a second thought, like writing an acceptable letter or even completing a simple crossword puzzle. If anything is backward thinking, that is. Heaven help the kids whose calculators and spell-checkers fail them! The well-established and proven methods of teaching the ‘three Rs’ never was such a bad thing.

By the way Jim, good try on the ‘deliberate mistake’, but you really need to learn your tables by rote. You won’t regret it - honestly. ;o)

[jim360]

Actually my times tables are excellent, and it was indeed a deliberate mistake. Still, I suppose the problem with a "joke" like that is that, well, I would say that wouldn't I. I don't have to defend my mental arithmetic to anyone, though, and certainly not my times tables.

I did concede on the previous page that perhaps I was picking the fight against rote learning too early, but all the same I don't think that this "new" emphasis on times tables is suddenly going to sort out issues with numeracy in children.

[joeluke]

Of course the calculator is to blame - nowadays kids can just press a few buttons to get the correct answers, instead of pre-calculator era where they had to actually use their brains to get the solutions

Whatever happened to working out sums using good old pencil and paper and one's brain cells?

[naomi24]

jim, //I don't think that this "new" emphasis on times tables is suddenly going to sort out issues with numeracy in children.//

The point is it does no harm – in fact it is extremely useful throughout life - and it doesn’t preclude children from learning the rest. We don’t need to choose between teaching the basics by rote and teaching children to understand maths. We can and should do both.

[Prudie]

I feel the best argument for promoting learning by rote is for ABers to remember how they learned, I'd bet most of the more mature would say by rote and as a consequence they have never forgotten them. I also learned Pythagoras theorem and the formula to solve quadratics by heart (as examples), it enabled me to solve a raft of problems. Only later in my education did I learn their derivation and how to deduce them myself. Personally I think that's the best order to learn them. If we started with the first then a massive proportion of learners would fail at the outset.

[jim360]

In that case I think I agree with you Naomi.

joeluke -- before calculators there were tables. Same principle, same reliance on something else to do the work for you. Calculators are not a problem if you know what you are doing, just as tables weren't in those days, but some people just never understand the process, either because they aren't taught it properly or otherwise.

It is not the fault of the calculator, at any rate.

[Prudie]

Not entirely true, books of tables were used for trig, exponentials and logs etc etc but not for adding and multiplying. That's where some have become reliant on calculators.

[DTCwordfan]

My belief is that, if the child is up for it, to learn both rote and process. I do not jest but my not-even-four year old stunned me by coming out with '35 Dad, that's seven groups of five' when I asked her sister what 7x5 was, in the car, practising times tables by rote.

Mind you, she's 12 now and onto calculus and quadratics - and loves maths.

The fail-safe should be rote, the teaching of process pushed as far as possible, the concept of groups is not that hard.

[DTCwordfan]

Prudie's remark is so true - and for the 12-14 year old, we learned how to use a slide ruler. One of my fav things at that age was when my old man brought back a circular one from the States - that was cool.

[jim360]

Yes, I suppose that's true to be fair prudie. I have seen tables as they were prepared in the past and wonder how the heck people ever got used to them, so I don't want it to look like I don't value mental arithmetic, or old-school way of working things out. It's mainly the rote aspect that I'm cautious about. So long as it's supplemented by teaching method then there's not really an issue.

On a different note, it always intrigues me that people criticise calculators and say that pen-and-paper is better. Really? The people who need calculators, and who can't really use them, are going to do no better when given just pen-and-paper, and rather a lot worse more likely. In the same way if your pen-and-paper calculations are fine then you will be able to use a calculator no problem, and in many cases perhaps should since the error rate is going to be reduced if the calculator does all the intermediate working for you. And, since you understood the problem anyway, you'll have some idea of what answer you were expecting, so you can check the given answer and discover if you entered the problem wrong.

All calculators really do is speed things up, be that speeding up your arriving at the correct answer, or at the wrong one.

[andres]

The Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, has declared today that as part of a ''war on numeracy and literacy'',all pupils will be forced to learn times tables by heart by the age of eleven. This is in a bid to make our schools the best in Europe by 2020.Apparently at the moment we are 26th for maths in tables for pupils aged 15yrs.- ---below Estonia, Poland and Estonia.

[jno]

I assume what's new about this is the promise to sack teachers.

[mushroom25]

//I assume what's new about this is the promise to sack teachers. //

and that promise is made in the belief that an inability of any particular pupil to learn is always the fault of the school or its teachers.

whereas some kids just won't get it, even if they stay in school until they're 50.

[Marshwarble]

Any particular reason why 11 year olds can't learn their 13 times table?

[bhg481]

And what would they use it for, Marshwarble. It would be learning for learning's sake.

[mushroom25]

bhg481, now that we don't count in dozens any more, any times table beyond 10 is irrelevant.