California Removes Memorizing Times Tables

Everyone should know their times tables!

And we think red states are bad with education.

Memorizing times tables seems like not the best way to teach math.

I told you all before that my supervisors at my last FT job as a statistician (30-something year old math majors) couldn't do math in their heads at all. That's why they all carried hand calculators around with them and kept them on their desks.

You didn't believe me when I said it then. I wouldn't have believed it either --but I lived it every day.

The dumbing down of the next generation continues. Multiplication tables allows people to absorb and retain basic math in their head which is useful throughout life. If you need to look up what 12 times 12 is, and have to look it up, then you're a lost cause.

I'm more concerned with the untimed tests to prevent " math anxiety." Fuck that.

Arithmetic is racist.

[quote] If you need to look up what 12 times 12 is, and have to look it up, then you're a lost cause.

Hrmmmmmm R5 those in glass houses!

[quote] If you need to look up what 12 times 12 is, and have to look it up, then you're a lost cause.

Well, even 50 years ago when I went to school knowing the 12 times tables was just extra credit not a requirement.

It was mandatory growing up in the 80s.

Times tables are one of the few takeaways from school that is actually useful and helpful in life. However, I am against timed tests. Whenever I take one, I fixate on the clock and do have anxiety which causes me to perform poorly. I had to take several to become a teacher so it wasn’t just a thing when I was a kid.

OP linked to a joke website

OP's site is the only one saying this. I can see de-emphasizing timed tests, but multiplication will still be taught. Hennie Penny stuff...

DEI 𝘶̈𝘣𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘴

OP is a Repug TROLL.

I bet Op can multiply 6 times 8

Wow. The multiplication table is something I’ve retained all my life. I do arithmetic just to keep it fresh. What’s everyone going to do? Just use a calculator for everything?

Hi Defacto!

How strange that libtard California consistently has higher SAT scores than your own Pennsylvania.

Atlantis will rise, Sunset Boulevard will fall

Where the beach used to be won't be nothing at all

That's the way it appears...

I remember in Catholic grade school, the nuns would drill us on our times tables, up and down the rows. They would start at a different student every day and if we didn’t beat our time from the day before we had to write out our times tables. We knew them pretty quickly.

What should be removed is shitty math teachers who don't know how to inspire children to learn.

Are they deliberately deskilling kids? What the fuck?

Dumb and dumber.

That's the future. We used to aspire to be better. Now it's a race to the bottom.

I work with college educated GenXs and Ys. They can't write in script so their handwriting looks like a 10 year olds. Also, it is shocking how much they don't know, even more shocking, they don't care that they don't know.

I'm old now and don't remember most of my timetables but I'll tell you memorizing them was very helpful throughout my life. Also I am gobsmacked they no longer use script. Fundamental.

How can math be racist? Too hard?

Timetable has served me well as a mental shortcut when figuring numbers on the fly. Just now I tried to remember the 1-10 table and got them all, though I had to confirm as 7x7=49 and 9x9=81 were fuzzy, I still got them correctly.

Newsflash. Most people are horrible at math.

I work in retail management and marketing for a local business.

We have a clearance sale for the retail stores coming up and we can’t have a 75% off sale because we know the public can’t do math in their head so we have to market 50% instead.

People have calculators on their phones now so I think people are more savvy with math than they were in the “old school days”.

'We have a clearance sale for the retail stores coming up and we can’t have a 75% off sale because we know the public can’t do math in their head so we have to market 50% instead.

People have calculators on their phones now so I think people are more savvy with math than they were in the “old school days”.'

I'm missing something very important here. Can somebody explain this to me?

Memorization is not learning, it's memorizing. Do you know that 12 x12 is 144 because you memorized it 40 years ago or do you know it because you actually learned why 12 x12 is 144. I think that is an important distinction. Memorization so that kids can pass some state-mandated standardized test is not educating.

Memorization is not learning

[quote]Memorization so that kids can pass some state-mandated standardized test is not educating.

Not sure that's absolute; in the old days we didn't have "state-mandated standardized tests", so we memorized the multiplication tables and in those days we were considered educated.

[quote] We used to aspire to be better. Now it's a race to the bottom.

If you graph America's educational collapse it would largely correlate with the increasing political power of the teachers' unions and the ballooning budget of the Department of Education.

Amusing you were ever taught how to graph

R20 But you get a basic understanding on how multiplication works . A case of 5 dozen oranges contains 60. 3 boxes of 6 wine glasses is 24. Learning the Times Table is a reference that will always come back to you for basic math. Most of the Millennial Generation know this. However Gen Z is clueless on basic math like simple multiplication. Math is fundamental not just for basic daily use, but for building deductive reasoning and logic that applies to numerous other subjects and uses.

You may think you were educated and that may have been the common thought at the time, but you weren't, R31.

R33 "3 boxes of 6 wine glasses is 24. "

That was a typo , it should read 4 boxes of 6 wine glasses is 24.

[quote]If you graph America's educational collapse it would largely correlate with the increasing political power of the teachers' unions and the ballooning budget of the Department of Education.

It has much more to do with the collapse of the American family and the parents' non-involvement in seeing that their children are educated. All studies prove that, although MAGAts would agree with you.

Children should learn to read and read widely. They should learn to play and read music, even if they abandon it later as teenagers. They need art classes and should practice spacial and perspective skills, and nowadays they should develop visual literacy for digital imagery.

They should do all kinds of memorization and classification tasks - maths, geography and taxonomy.

They should develop sportsmanship and physical coordination and learn to take on physical challenges and competitions - physical (and cognitive).

The good news is even lower IQ kids can mostly do all this! With a bit of funding for the art and music, these skills don't require a certain social-economic family setting.

They are straightforward to teach.

Who the hell is in charge of state curriculums?

Do the students have to work for anything?

Kansas should bring back that 8th grade exam, with some modernized content. I like the breadth of it and also many of the questions are of sound methodology.

This anxiety bullshit is completely out of hand, and it is nonsensical to think math,atics is racist.

The problem is coping.

Learn how to cope.

[quote]Newsflash. Most people are horrible at math.

Here's another newsflash, R27. American students are much better at math than they are at reading. If you don't believe me, look it up.

And if you think most people are bad at math, hell -- their reading skills are much, much worse.

If you don't believe that, just read DL for awhile.

Memorization is the beginning of learning. Like memorizing the alphabet, memorizing numbers, learning a foreign language(conjugations,) memorizing later on a Shakespeare soliloquy. You run it through your head over and over and its meaning slowly reveals itself to you like a dawning light. An exciting thing happening in your mind.

Memorizing the times tables sometimes means you have these answers immediately in your head. It's pretty cool and comes in handy without having to pull out your phone. You pull it out of your brain instantly.

[quote]If you need to look up what 12 times 12 is

That's GROSS!

First they came for cursive, but I did not speak out because I could print

Then they came for multiplication tables ...

I know my times table. What I can’t do is add or subtract in my head. When my grandson was in elementary school, he learned it in a whole new way as I found out when I tried to help him with his arithmetic homework one night. I was doing the whole “cross number out, carry the one” spiel and he told me I was doing it wrong. Now they round up or down or something and add/subtract the overage. I think. But now he can add or subtract in his head like a whiz.

I only got through Trig by sheer will power. WHAT was that all about??

I can't count to 21 unless I'm naked.

[quote]If you need to look up what 12 times 12 is, and have to look it up, then you're a lost cause.

But I have a thick 8" so whatever.

Does this apply to white and Asian students or is it just the usual suspects?

You don't memorize 9x8 just to do it. Sure, it's good to know that answer. But calculators can do that now.

The real reason you do it to make your brain conceptualize what it means to multiply, to "exercise" the brain, to condition it like we do when we practice sports over and over, and to do this quickly and competently by using the powerful method of repetitiveness.

Silly to take that away.

R47 I mean I do too but my undergrad minor was in mathematics. Why not both?

This is something they now do in most private schools, at least the NYC ones with which I am familiar. Third graders are told not to memorize their times tables because it interferes with their “abstract thinking.” It’s very controversial.

I never understood why the times tables didn't stop at 10 instead of 12. Why 12? Why not 13? Or18? If I want to buy a bakers dozen, it's actually 13, if I want to buy 12 bakers dozens I have no memorized number in my head. Batteries come in a 16 pack, who here has memorized their 16 times tables?

More 'woke' crap.

The so-called progressives are lowering our standards everywhere simply because POC can't keep up.

Thus, blue states will fall; red states will rise.

You can't do more sopisticated math, such as 843 x 697, without knowing your times tables. Math is purely logic. You are solving a logic problem. If you can't solve problems logically at any point of your life, you'll forever be at a disadvantage. People will also think you are stupid.

R53 This this is all linked to a fake new article and CA is NOT getting rid of the times tables, seems to me Repugs and MAGA such as yourself are the down fall of this country not the blue states.

This depresses me. I’m old. I’m my late 60s. I used to feel embarrassed that my parents’ generation seemed not only smarter but more capable. Many had manual skills, home skills, craft skills, musical skills that we never learned.

But I have a cluster of friends in their late 30s - all intelligent, educated - but they have zero sense of direction, can’t do basic math, have the vocabulary of fifth graders, wouldn’t know what to do with a map, have close to zero knowledge of even recent history , and basically can’t function very well without their phones.

Maybe every generation of old folks complains like this? But it somehow feels worse now, that there’s ever-decreasing emphasis on being a well-rounded person intellectually. Not only less emphasis, but that cultivating the mind is looked down upon.

It makes me feel like I don’t belong.

You don't belong r56, because you are not intelligent enough to realize the OP's post is to a fake news article and many comments on this board have pointed it out. It's not happening, CA is not getting rid of making kids learn the times tables. Yet poor you, old guy, cant be bothered to read other people's post before you comment on what a victim of the times you are.

Is anyone here a victim of "New Math" in the 60's? Yeah, THAT went well. Fucking sets. That's all I remember, those fucking bundles of red tubes.

"As a result of this controversy, and despite the ongoing influence of the New Math, the phrase "new math" is often used now to describe any short-lived fad that quickly becomes discredited. In 1999, Time placed it on a list of the 100 worst ideas of the 20th century."

R48: "The usual suspects"? e.g. those who think ignorance is a badge of honor.

Can R55 and R57 link to a source that confirms "The Wall" (OP) is a fake news site?

I don't want to be "not intelligent enough" to recognize a stealth "fake news article."

They seem so sure that they're smarter than the rest of us.

[quote] About us - The Well News is an independent, American news organization that strives to help our audience connect the dots in an increasingly complex informational landscape by providing unbiased, well-researched and thought-provoking content on multiple platforms.

It may be alternative but that doesn't mean it's fake. What are we missing?

I always assumed "anxiety" was part of the process.

Next is the removal of their brains.

We are very fortunate to now live in a brave new world in which 2+2 can equal 5. So, what's the point of memorizing or knowing anything?

- Harvard Class of 2024

I'm not convinced the link in OP's post is an outright lie. There has been controversy for a year now about the common core and it's complicated. From my understanding math memorization work - addition, subtraction, multiplication, division - isn't banned but there is now a lot of mumbo jumbo about what to do with all the kids WHO DO NOT LEARN IT. Meaning they are saying it's OK for math courses to continue and the kids to continue progressing..... without knowing math from memory.

Also there is a proposal - or is it accepted? that there will be NO MORE TRACKING so all students in each grade learn the same math though 10th grade. This means all the "gifted" (and it seems to me a dumbing down of "gifted") students won't get advanced math early, when they are ready for it and can do it. I say this is a dumbing down of "gifted" because in my public school in the 70s, about 1/3 of the students could do accelerated math. 1/3 is not "gifted", its routine. We have the clever, the average, and the slow or incapable.

I'm still waiting for the Decabet.

[quote] link to a source that confirms "The Wall" (OP) is a fake news site?

It's not our job to ask you to do research before you have a life meltdown over a small article that has not appears anywhere else on the internet. He's a link: GOOGLE

OP and company: People who bray about the death of cursive. they probably want to bring back sentence diagramming.

I *love* sentence diagramming.

R66

I DID Google it, asshole, and found what looked to be a valid site. I GOOGLED further to make sure. I was politely - unlike you - asking where their claims were coming from because. when I GOOGLED it, it seemed to be REAL news site.

And I think, Your Brilliance, you should read what you wrote because it makes no sense. I think you meant "it's not our job to do research" rather than "It's not our job to ask you to do research...".

Try harder. Also, as R68 pointed out, try diagramming, for content and meaning, that sentence you wrote.

I hope your day gets better.

All sites spin stories. ALL. I posted a in depth discussion of the issue at hand at R64.

The right will try to spin any education issues as "woke political agenda nonsense" and the left will deny and deny. Methods and curriculum will have to adapt because young people have radically different cognition because they have been tethered to the internet all their lives.

You can't deny that too many kids are graduating high school - or dropping out before the diploma - with weak critical thinking skills and low basic skills. Dumbing everything down is not the answer.

It might be Darwinian but perhaps the kids should be tracked MUCH MORE, not much less. And the academic track can continue on tried and tested ways but the non-academic track needs an intensive overhaul in the USA.

[quote] California’s New Math Framework Doesn’t Add Up. It would place Golden State 6th graders years behind the rest of the world—and could eventually skew education in the rest of the U.S., too

But at least all the California kids will have found equity in their inability to do math, and that's all that matters.

In other news, California has removed spelling and grammer from the curriculum.

[quote]In other news, California has removed spelling and grammer from the curriculum.

I guess you must be a current student.

Spelling doesn't cunt, R73

In my public school fifth grade class in the late 1960s, we learned to do math in base 7, which meant the sequence went 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10; 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20; 21, 22..... We equate "10" as 10 as one set of ten ones in base 10. In base 7, "10" is one set of 7. 10 x 10 would equal 49 in base ten. Looking back, no one in class struggled with it, and it was a typical fifth-grade class. We were taught what to look for, and we did it.