Please Settle An Argument About Learning Tables By Rote

[Kendodd]

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.

I wondered whether anyone would spot that

Having automatic recall of times tables frees up the brain to focus on the bigger picture of the calculation so has been shown to be beneficial

I had an extremely formal education with constant testing of spelling and tables and I remember neither. I am dyslexic but I have managed to have a career in marketing in which my numeracy was extremely important to my success. Indeed I was the PITA giving my direct reports grief for their data free analysis, often they had actually graduated in STEM subjects but still didn't actually feel comfortable with numbers and how they can be used to make the world more easily understood.

So yes to plenty of time spent on numeracy skills but using different teaching styles to suit different learning styles and ways of thinking but above all to give people the same access and ease in the world of numbers as the world of literacy.

And just to be super provocative I do get fed up with this sort of narrow minded one size fits all approach to education. 10% of the population have a Specific Learning Difficulty such as Dyslexia or Dyscalcula, including memory problems or an inability to see numbers and plenty of others benefit from having things taught in different teaching styles so why not teach to suit all learning styles not just those of the privileged minority who just happen to have excellent memories, instant recall and editing skills. Skills which do well by you in the school system but do not necessarily reflect intellectual ability, the abilities in creativity, imagination, idea generation, management skills etc etc that matter in the real world