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.