I do thank the Lord I learned times tables
MAKE children learn their times tables?
What on earth for?” raged a local radio presenter. “How often”, he snarled at his listeners, “do you think ‘I’m so lucky
I learned my seven times table?’” To my horror he was serious. “How about, ‘I thank the Lord I know all my tables
every day, all the time, without fail, you blinkered fool?’” I yelled at the radio.
I meant it and if you’re of the generation fortunate enough to have spent large chunks of primary school chanting your tables aloud in a singsong tuneless dirge forever imprinted on your memory, you’ll mean it too. T
Tables are vital. Without them you can’t work out how much nine packets of crisps will cost without whipping out a calculator.
I constantly use my seven times – to work out how many days there are in the endless seeming weeks before I have holiday due. I exhume my five times to work out how much, or often how little, I’ve earned that week, my two times whenever I think of a number and double it and the rest of the times tables whenever they come in handy.
Tables are vital
If you can’t yell “64” automatically, without thought, as a reflex response when a total stranger says “eight eights”
you’re mathematically stymied for life.
You won’t be able to cope with long division, fractions, equations or anything more complicated without footling about with your mobile phone and wasting valuable time getting the machine to give you a figure you ought to be as familiar with as your own name. Hooray for Michael Gove’s return to common sense.