> How does someone not immediately know the answer to 550 divided by 2? <
I’ll field that one. It’s not because those people are stupid. It’s because the people running the schools are stupid.
Back in the old days students had to memorize basic arithmetic facts: 6x7 = 42, etc. Those days are pretty much gone.
In the school district where I taught it was forbidden to teach such facts. Math had to be done by calculator only. An elementary teacher I know passed out the times table to her students (she did that on her own). When the principal found out, the teacher was ordered to collect those times tables immediately. And don’t do it again.
My husband was tutoring a HS freshman in math. She had never learned, or heard of, “the times tables”.
He taught her that, and many methods of “working out” an answer.
Her teacher got mad at THE GIRL when she turned around her math skills! For being smarter than her teacher, I guess.