Question above is pretty blunt but was doing a study for a college course and came across that stat. How is that possible? My high school sucked but I was well equipped even with that sub standard level of education for college. Obviously income is a thing but to think 1 out of 5 American adults is categorized as illiterate is…astounding. Now poor media literacy I get, but not this. Edit: this was from a department of education report from 2022. Just incase people are curious where that comes from. It does also specify as literate in English so maybe not as grim as I thought.
My niece from Florida came to live with me in December, just finished fifth grade and I was stunned that she doesn’t know her multiplication tables. My kids In Pennsylvania learned them in 3rd grade a few years ago.
Does she understand the concept of multiplication though? That’s ultimately the important part.
Learning rote things like multiplication tables seems kinda silly in a world where Google can just do the math for you. But the important thing is to be able to recognize when multiplication is useful.
Exactly. I didn’t learn multiplication tables, but instead, my teachers taught what multiplication was and how to do it. Sure, after practicing how to do it I memorized a lot of basic math facts, but it was more important that I understand what I was doing rather than just knowing that 9×5=45. Then again, my parents saw the sorry state of public schools (both teachers) and made sure that I was sent to a decent private school after seeing the travesty of the local public school’s reading curriculum.
There are still plenty of instances where doing arithmetic quickly in your head is useful (figuring out a tip at the cash register, for example) that memorizing it can have advantages.
I agree that mental math is useful, but in scenarios like that, times tables aren’t really useful since the tables are rotely memorized and rarely does a bill fall nicely into a times table.
Better to learn a technique like “move the decimal place left one position and double that number to get 20%”.
But realistically, with a phone in your pocket, it’s not much more effort to pull it out and use the calculator.
It’s unfortunate, but the school systems seem to be fine with the problem these days. The teachers are underpaid and furious these days with the school boards.
Sadly if you don’t make noise in your area and get other parents rallied, the administrators are continuing to “cut costs,” and the kids who aren’t in private schools are effected.