Times tables : why make children learn their 12x?

[truman]

Where are you people finding these shops and eateries that don't have tills?! I don't even use cash any more!

 

Don't you ever check your bill?

 

---------- Post added 05-02-2015 at 15:43 ----------

 

Where are you people finding these shops and eateries that don't have tills?! I don't even use cash any more!

 

---------- Post added 05-02-2015 at 15:42 ----------

 

 

If you're not working it out, you aren't 'doing multiplication' you're just remembering it.

 

I did all the hard work when I was little..makes it as lot easier now.. for example I know 7*7 =49 so to find 14*7 I just have to multiply 49*2...if you see my point..

Edited February 5, 2015 by truman

[Fogey]

Learning by rote is good. It provides a useful store of knowlefge with near instant recall.

But you must also understand the principles behind it.

Like it or not imperial measures are still used ( I hate them) and knowing your 12x tables can help as a foundation for getting your head round it if nothing else. Note that not all countries are decimal and we are increasingly globalised.

Our country is only mostly decimalised and there is still much stuff that was put in place under imperial systems so understanding at least some of it can be helpful in translating it.

Forcing children to do some of what they don't enjoy helps teach them that sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do and you can't just give up because it us hard. In a way it enforces a principal of dedication to doing what you have to.

 

---------- Post added 05-02-2015 at 15:53 ----------

 

I usually use a calculator to do my maths, but it gets a cross check from my mind to see if it sounds right. If somebody is doing electrical calcs in their head they need to check it with a calculator and be sure the 2 answers match. Human beings make mistakes all the time. Sometimes so do calculators, - I have seen it happen with a faulty one. Check it check it check it.

Edited February 5, 2015 by Fogey

[Obelix]

Where are you people finding these shops and eateries that don't have tills?! I don't even use cash any more!

 

Your lack of cash doesnt mean you won't be charged incorrectly though - and similarly if you "trust" the machine to be always right it's easy for someone to exploit that trust and skim a pound off here and there...

[barleycorn]

Anyway does anyone actually know for a fact that children AREN'T taught to try and remember their times tables? Any primary school teachers on here?

 

As far as I know they are still taught them, just not usually through chanting techniques... they then go onto to chunking and gridding for long multiplication and long division.

 

jb

[L00b]

As an ex-French primary/secondary school kid (so made to learn my timetables up to 20x indeed ), I can vouch for the everyday useability of their rote learning, as many have posted on here already.

 

But as the father to a British primary school kid, I've been horrified by the current 'graphic-based' methods. A concern shared by all the teachers to date whom I've discussed this with, who nevertheless assured me that they 'had' to, the same as the kids 'had' to, use these methods for compliance with and grading according to the national curriculum.

 

I say, bring back the rote, the handheld black boards and the chalk: as a primary school kid, we had to learn the tables as homework, then undergo 'examination' in classtime by writing the answer (to the teacher's multiplication question) on one's blackboard and immediately hold it up above our head. The first to raise their board (with the correct answer) had a "green point" (collect 50, get a reading book), the last and all incorrect answerers had a (light) penalty (10 lines or such).

 

With the benefit of hindsight and maturity now, that was a perfect balance of carrot and stick IMHO: each examination usually counted between 10 and 15 questions and, whether you were bothered about getting green points or not, nobody but nobody felt like ending up with 100 to 150 lines

Edited February 5, 2015 by L00b

[spilldig]

So you think children should learn 12x table because you still work in imperial measurements, but you don't think punctuation matters? Right. Glad we've sorted that one out.

 

---------- Post added 04-02-2015 at 23:02 ----------

 

 

Thank you for spotting the real point.

 

The whole question of what children should learn - and why is - fascinating.

 

However, if utility is the starting point (for which tables to teach), then it should be 2x to 10x, plus the prime numbers between 10 and 20. The rest (as I have demonstrated) are all easily calculable, assuming the child understands what mulitplication actually is.

 

Not sure that Obelix (or anyone else) has offered a convincing case for all tables up to 20x though. Nobody has yet come up with an everyday situation where instant recall of the 11x or 12x would be useful.

 

Annie Bynol makes a good point about geometry applications (of the 12x table), but I would be interested to know what use they serve in 'most sciences', as Obelix claims. Some examples would be useful, rather than vague assertions.

 

---------- Post added 04-02-2015 at 23:04 ----------

 

 

That would be 'off', then. The irony...

 

And your last sentence has no main verb, by the way. (A present participle - such as 'being' - cannot be a main verb).

 

 

Without meaning to be rude, you should have realised that missing the f off was a typing error, done because I was in a hurry, as sometimes happens. I think I have known that off is not spelled of since I was a few years old. As for the being, I don't know because I left school at fifteen and went straight into a job to help out with the family coffers as did everyone else at the school. That's how it was then, so I don't claim to be as perfect as you obviously are, but I know that we were all required, by the age of eleven to recite all the tables up to twelve times and write a short story and pronounce words correctly. It has served me well. To give an example of what relying on calculators has done I will recite the following. Eventually I went on to study and I got myself a career in electronics, and in the process I became friends with one of the tutors who is a professor of electronics. He found that when calculators started to be overused common sense went out the window. For instance, if, say someone was working out the current flowing in a domestic electric fire they would just put down what the calculator came up with and if that was one amp, or should that be amperes? I'm sure you will enlighten us. Then they would answer one amp even though common sense tells them it should be ten amps.

[vwkittie]

Don't you ever check your bill?

 

 

Of course I always check it to make sure I've been given any discounts etc, but you can do that perfectly well without knowing every single times table instantly off by heart though, that's my whole point!

[truman]

Of course I always check it to make sure I've been given any discounts etc, but you can do that perfectly well without knowing every single times table instantly off by heart though, that's my whole point!

 

So what point were you making about tills?..Do you work out any multiplications you may have to do everytime..or do you remember some..?

[aliceBB]

Without meaning to be rude, you should have realised that missing the f off was a typing error, done because I was in a hurry, as sometimes happens. I think I have known that off is not spelled of since I was a few years old. As for the being, I don't know because I left school at fifteen and went straight into a job to help out with the family coffers as did everyone else at the school. That's how it was then, so I don't claim to be as perfect as you obviously are, but I know that we were all required, by the age of eleven to recite all the tables up to twelve times and write a short story and pronounce words correctly. It has served me well. To give an example of what relying on calculators has done I will recite the following. Eventually I went on to study and I got myself a career in electronics, and in the process I became friends with one of the tutors who is a professor of electronics. He found that when calculators started to be overused common sense went out the window. For instance, if, say someone was working out the current flowing in a domestic electric fire they would just put down what the calculator came up with and if that was one amp, or should that be amperes? I'm sure you will enlighten us. Then they would answer one amp even though common sense tells them it should be ten amps.

 

I only pointed out the non-standard spelling and grammar in your post because you were the one bleating so loudly about the allegedly poor spelling and grammar you claim to see all around you these days. People in glass houses, etc.

 

As for calculators, you seem to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. They were used disastrously in the 80s as a substitute for mental arithmetic skills and knowing one's tables; teachers soon realised (if they hadn't already) that you have to be able (a) to understand the concept behind the computation and (b) estimate with reasonable accuracy, otherwise you have no idea whether the answer the calculator produces is right or not. If you can do (a) and (b), then a calculator is a useful tool, just as a spellchecker is on a computer if you understand standard English grammar. If your grasp of grammar is shaky, then you are likely to produce homophone errors (of/off, their/there, etc) regardless of what the spellchecker comes up with.

 

Incidentally, knowing the likely ampage of domestic electric fires is not 'common sense'; it has to be taught. You have to be taught quite a lot about electricity, in fact, before you can safely make any assumptions about electric fires.

Edited February 5, 2015 by aliceBB

[spilldig]

I only pointed out the non-standard spelling and grammar in your post because you were the one bleating so loudly about the allegedly poor spelling and grammar you claim to see all around you these days. People in glass houses, etc.

 

As for calculators, you seem to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. They were used disastrously in the 80s as a substitute for mental arithmetic skills and knowing one's tables; teachers soon realised (if they hadn't already) that you have to be able (a) to understand the concept behind the computation and (b) estimate with reasonable accuracy, otherwise you have no idea whether the answer the calculator produces is right or not. If you can do (a) and (b), then a calculator is a useful tool, just as a spellchecker is on a computer if you understand standard English grammar. If your grasp of grammar is shaky, then you are likely to produce homophone errors (of/off, their/there, etc) regardless of what the spellchecker comes up with.

 

Incidentally, knowing the likely ampage of domestic electric fires is not 'common sense'; it has to be taught. You have to be taught quite a lot about electricity, in fact, before you can safely make any assumptions about electric fires.

 

I was using the electric fire as an example. It doesn't matter what is being worked out, the point was that understanding how things are worked out helps you decide if the result on the calculator is correct. I don't see how my grasp of grammar is shaky. I accidentally missed a letter off because I was in a hurry. The mistake I made was in not replying when I had more time. It is altogether different to not knowing how a word is spelled. It's not ampage by the way, it's amperage.

Edited February 6, 2015 by spilldig