In my area, students aren’t required to learn times-tables anymore. We spent a lot of time drilling our youngest on those, because they weren’t emphasized in school anymore...someone had decided that students didn’t need to know math facts anymore because calculators are so readily available.
What I’ve found with my students is that since they don’t really have a good grasp on basic math facts, (1) they can’t readily tell when they’ve put the numbers in the calculator incorrectly, and (2) they are unable or unwilling to attempt calculations without a calculator.
I’m glad to see that you are injecting some reality into the conversation. “Reform” math is a crime against children, and the “math educators” pushing this stuff try to divert attention from the ineffectiveness of these curricula by accusing others others of not being willing to accept “diverse” approaches to mathematics. The traditional methods are traditional because they work. A child who does not know math facts by memory cannot succeed in any math related discipline any more than you can build a house without a foundation. By refusing to teach long division, these so-called educators are not only depriving children of the much needed intellectual discipline of learning an important algorithm, they are virtually assuring that the same students later on will be unable to do algebraic division. I could continue in this vein, but I’ll spare you...;-) Thanks again for the post.
You’re right about the times tables. So I taught my grandchildren.