Doug Anderson wrote:
> emma_anne@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Emma Anne) writes:
>
>> Tai <tainuitiDELETE@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>
>>> I don't know about the US but multiplication tables are still
>>> taught here
>>
>> Oh, they're taught here. I don't know whether they are always
>> learned here. :-)
>
> In our town students are sent home from school with multiplication
> tables and instructions to get their parents to drill them on these
> tables.
>
> The schools don't drill them on these table - not because the teachers
> think the multiplication tables are unim****tant, but because the
> teachers are busy making sure the students can pass the standardized
> tests (where multiplication table memorization is not a big help).
> (And probably also because the teachers find drilling students in
> multiplication table boring.)
>
> It is an interesting pedagogical point. I think it is useful to be
> able to do simple arithmetic in one's head, and it is easy to come up
> with lots of problems, usually involving money, which demonstrate
> this.
>
> But drilling students (or myself) on just the skill of multiplying (or
> worse yet memorizing products) seems like a hard thing to justify when
> calculators are cheap and ubiquitous.
Arithmetic is about all the numbers work most people will do in their
lives
so I think learning the multiplication tables to the point where no
thought
is required is probably one of the few basic skills a young adult should
come out of school with. Aside from that I hope some understanding of the
relation****p between the numbers is acquired at the same time and think
that
is more likely than not and so a good result from the exercise.
Although I can barely remember before decimalisation, people in the UK,
Australia and NZ learned how to routinely do mental arithmetic and make
change based on 12 pence to the ****lling, 20 ****llings to the pound, so I
think we're very lucky we can get by with much simpler arithmetic these
days
in money handling!
>
> I never "learned" multiplication tables, but when I was learning
> algebra, calculators were not cheap or common, and in the process of
> doing a billion algebra problems, the small multiplications eventually
> just stuck. I think there is something nice about the familiary with
> small integers that comes from knowing the products. 63 seems like a
> friendly number to me because (without thinking about it) I know that
> it is 7 x 9 and 3 x 21. I think most of us who know multiplication
> well probably feel similarly. Is this valuable? I'm not completely
> sure, but I like it.
I do, too.
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