I think it's not important at all to learn this, my friend thinks it's essential.
My reasons are that it takes seconds to work out, it's not going to hold you up in life. If you learn by rote you are not doing maths, you are just memorising a rhyme or a table, you don't have to understand it. Knowing it by rote might disguise the fact that you don't understand them. It is much more important to be able to work it out, if you can work it out this skill doesn't stop at twelve, admittedly it does gets harder the higher you go. Is there also an argument that if you will keep having to work it out you are exercising your brain?
Her reasons are that having instant recall is essential as people (maybe employers) are not going to be impressed if you can't do this. You can't remember it if you don't understand it anyway (I disagree) so it can't hide the fact you don't understand it. It's good to get children to work at remembering things and teachers think they should learn it and they should know more than us (agreed). She's useless and maths and would be lost if she'd never learned it all by rote (her words). If you have to work it out you're more likely to get it wrong.
I know both arguments for and against have some merit. If you had to come down on one side though what would you say? Is it really essential to know them and should I be making sure my children do this? As I said, personally I would rather they worked it out each time and kept those skills alive.
Neither if us are teachers so have no training or understanding on the theory behind learning tables by rote.
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Please Settle An Argument About Learning Tables By Rote
54 replies
Kendodd · 01/09/2014 10:37
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