[posterchild]

That’s nuts. Are students no longer able to multiply 7 by 10 and then divide by 2?

[Veto!]

How about memorizing those funny old-fashioned multiplication tables?
We had “drills” in school when I was a kid, “today we’ll do the eights.”
8 x 1 is 8
8 x 2 is 16
etc
It was like memorizing the words to a song…just easy. It was like learning the alphabet. Or don’t they do that anymore?

Unless there’s some very good reason to avoid any sort of memorization, knowing the “tables” makes lifelong sense. Here’s a rather good article:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/03/25/jonathan-kay-want-to-empower-your-kid-teach-them-the-multiplication-table/?__federated=1