Times Tables 'must Be Memorised By Age 11'

[mikey4444]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35216318

I was 11 in 1964 and before I went to the Secondary School, I already
knew my tables. What has happened in the last 50 years that only now is the Education Secretary realising that some kids don't ?

If these kids have been in school since the age of 5, why do they not know their tables ?

[naomi24]

Money's not the only thing we count. The '11s' and '12s' still come in handy for me. I think I probably use 'times tables' at some time during most days.

[mikey4444]

Me too Naomi !

[jim360]

I appreciate that but it seems to me that stopping at 12 makes no sense. You should either stop later (at, say, 20*20 -- although I'm not really serious about this as it's 4 times more work) or earlier at 10*10, from which all others can be constructed.

Actually, 16*16 makes some sense since it could be related to computer arithmetic. It's just the bizarre arbitrariness of 12*12 that bugs me.

[ichkeria]

I always thought the 11s and 12s were useful for 'keeping you on your toes' after the rather pathetically easy 10s :-)

[naomi24]

Jim, none of it bugs me. Practical learning was never a waste of time.

[Old_Geezer]

Nothing stopping eager pupils learning more tables in their own time. These tables, once committed to memory, are the trusted basis upon which all further mathematical learning is built upon. Schools have to draw a line somewhere and with twelve pennies to the shilling it was probably seen as far enough without pushing and using time better used for other learning.

[anotheoldgit]

jim360

/// How else would you add/ subtract/ multiply/ divide numbers on paper, AOG? ///

Hard to put down in type jim, but take the simple two examples 932-457 = 475

What is wrong with the simple method of borrowing 10 and paying 1 back?

[jim360]

I guess my frustration is mostly the focus on times tables that often appears to the detriment of other skills. Far, far more important is the ability to compute longer sums, and on this site it's been made abundantly clear how many people lack that skill. Knowing 7 x 8 is far less important than being able to interpret, say, 5 + 7 x 8. (which is 61 and not 96, by the way).

I often feel that a good deal of the reason that mathematical education sucks is because the people ultimately in charge of deciding how to teach it obsess over the skills that they can just about remember but don't understand any of the rest of it. Numeracy is a basic skill and very important, but it is about a great deal more than times tables.

[jim360]

Thanks for the reply AOG. But your "borrowing 10 and paying 1 back" seems to me to be exactly what's been written down there.

[anotheoldgit]

naomi24

Do you understand the first method of 932 minus 457?

Seems rather complicated to me, but then my schooling days where a very long time ago.

I regularly helped my grandsons out, when they were children, and they often said, "the way you teach us Grandad is a lot easier than our teacher teaches us".

[pixie374]

That is how they do it, aog.

[mikey4444]

Very interesting debate this morning ! Its seems that the majority of us think that its important to know our tables.

[jim360]

I'll try to explain the first method shown as best I can:

932 -
457

first do 2 - 7; 2 is smaller than 7 so we can't do this, so borrow ten from the 30 giving 12, while the 3 is crossed out and becomes 2. Then 12 - 7 = 5, which is the first digit.

Now do 2 - 5, which again doesn't go, so borrow 10 from the nine, which becomes 8, and gives 12 - 5 = 7. Then finally 8 - 4 = 4, giving the answer 475.

That seems to me to be the method of "borrowing tens", albeit with a layout that involves a lot of crossing out. The second method looks essentially the same except that every time you add a ten to the first number, you add ten to the second number -- this has the advantage of avoiding too many revisions to the top number and spaces out the various extra workings, but it's still basically the same method.

[anotheoldgit]

EDDIE51

In my employment, I had to work out various trigonometry calculations and that was before electronic calculators, they could not be worked out in the head so we used slide rules or mechanical calculators.

[Peter Pedant]

We chanted table to 6 when I was a seven year old.
every day after prayers
and then up to 12 was added in

Thur after noon 1959 - one hundred times table questions every week

My mother said - well in India 1920 we had to go up to 20
and we allwent erk

but dear reader cry not - that would be 20 x 12 whereas we naturally thought it would be 20 x 20 ( erk ! erk !! )
.

[roopower]

Can't wade my way through all the posts. I worked in several different schools before I retired three years ago and the children were taught times tables in all of them. A lot of the stuff you read about what schools are, or aren't doing is bunk!!!!!!

[Peter Pedant]

There was a phase in the eighties when some schools didnt insist the kids chanted tables
and none of us could work out how you learnt them

they said at the time there was no evidence that chanting helped a kid memorise a table ...

BODMAS went the way of the world too - Bring back Bodmas !

[pixie374]

Bodmas is still used, pp. Tables are learnt by chanting and tested randomly. Which makes sense to me. I've seen people trying to work out 7x8 by having to start at the beginning of 1x8 and work their way through!

[Peter Pedant]

Blimey at primary skool we werent allowed to call it Math

we had to call it Arithmetic an the set book was Funda,mental Arithmetic

All the old people called us scholars ( see the 1911 census and you will see why ) and the younger teachers said
You arent scholars ! You aint got scholarships !

My primary skool years passed and as you can see I dont regard them with any misty eyed regret....

[Mosaic]

At primary school, call it mid 60s, we recited our prayers and then a series of rote-learned calculations as the teacher did a series of necessary but non-teaching tasks eg resolving dinner money (for a class of 40)
These became more complex as we got older, and eventually included times tables up to 13 times, then helpful info on how many chains make a furlong. Educational theory having advanced, rods, poles and perches were omitted.

Being slightly discalculic I still have to quickly run through from the beginning to get to 7x9. Bearing in mind that for me the imprinted sequence begins 'hail Mary full of grace'. Not exactly lightning speed but it's all there eventually awaiting recall.

In the later 1960s academics pointed out the need for problem-solving skills and the need for mathematics to be taught not just as doing sums. A secondary schools syllabus was introduced called 'The School Maths Project' (SMP) which taught all sorts of areas of maths that had were previously only encountered at 18-plus. The thinking behind this was that as technology was changing different skills would be necessary, whereas mechanical skills (calculation) would probably be increasingly automated. This was driven by the universities of the time. It was a clever project in the right hands, but it assumed the pupils had already memorised their tables. The problem was that it was taught to a generation of new teachers who entered primary schools and hadn't been taught the need to teach by rote. In fact as others have hinted, teaching by rote was considered 'a bad thing' by the late 1960s.

This coincided with other changes in educational theory, some of which were disastrous - or at least, which were interpreted and applied in a disastrous fashion. In my direct experience for example a secondary school in Leicestershire did not require pupils to attend lessons. BTW there have been private fee-paying schools since the 1920s that ran on these lines, and which were the models for individual pupil-centred learning.

Similar issues that have affected maths learning have affected literacy skills.

Part of the reason for educational theories going teats up was that after the last Wilson government state educational became a political football, with politicians of right and left using schools as a means of forwarding their own individual careers first, and their parties' public profiles second.
One function of this was that educational funding became increasingly short term. There isn't one round of schools' funding over the last 20 years that has been for more than a 3-year spell. So short-term funding is thrown at a long-term problem.
The nation needs an adult in-depth discussion of what 21st century education should comprise, but instead we get knee-jerk reactions and a desire to blame.