Have people moved beyond the debate about how to learn maths time tables?

Question

I am surprised that I still hear people arguing about how kids should learn the multiplication tables. The most vocal are the ones that reject the old way when time tables are learnt by rote. Most sales assistants I meet at the shops are not able to do simple mental calculations. They are crippled without the cash registers and electronic calculators. Many supposedly intelligent people portraited in the media seem to regard learing the time tables by rote is a kind of torture or denying kids the chance to think. They even put it as the past or of inferior cultures.

Is this rationalism gone mad? Now we have a whole generation of so many young people having problems with basic mental calculations. In an experiment, after I taught my child the fundamental concepts of multiplication and division in early grade 2, she went on to learn the time tables by rote (in a special way I devised). Within 8 weeks, she pushed her primary teacher to limit in speed and accuracy in all of the tables from 2 to 12. Then at grade 3, she often embarassed sales assistants by telling them them how much change they should give her mum before they managed to get the cash register to tell the answer.

I wonder if the majority of people beleive that the best strategy to learn time tables is by rote like I do? (knowing that there are many ways to learn it by rote, some are better than others)

Answer 1

I'm not up on my math education strategies, so I have to ask...what other way(s) are there to learn times tables than by memorization?  (other than to assume that you'll always have a calculator with you...)

I understand that there can be different rote teaching strategies, but I don't know what non-rote teaching strategies there are.  

Answer 2

My son is 8 and we do the times tables by rote at home.  I got him a poster with them on it. It is not pushed officially in schools here (Australia) but the teachers are relieved to here when parents are doing it.

Answer 3

As a math teacher, there are just some things that require memorization. Learning the multiplication tables is one of them. You just have to do it over and over until it sticks. When students reach my classroom at the high school level and need to be reminded of basic multiplication facts, then there is a huuuge problem. Also, from the view of teacher that these students will meet in their future, I don't allow calculators for everything. So they will absolutely need to know the basics!