Tag Archives: multiplication problems

Mr. B. still doesn’t know his multiplication tables. He has to think, for instance, about what 5 X 5 is. Sometimes he guesses wrong. I would have solved this last year by forcing him into the sort of intense memorization session my own father put me through in one evening. But Mr. B.’s teacher last year, when the tables were introduced, said it wouldn’t be a good idea. He’d not know why they work as they do, she said, and I deferred. Little did I know she was programmed to say so, whether she believed it or not.