Math is a life skill kids aren’t learning

Re: Failures of discovery math multiplying, June 16

Congratulations to David Staples on his excellent column calling for an end to this foolish experiment. I’m sure thousands of parents out there are cheering. They should not have to “pay for expensive tutoring” just so their children can learn things like the times tables that should be taught in school.

Any mature adult can tell stories of shopping in stores with young cashiers. If something goes wrong and the cash register does not tell them how much change to give the customer, they are lost. Thanks to years of solid math training, we can quickly figure it out in our heads, but the poor kids just freeze. They have no idea what to do.

Even in the early stages of dementia, my mother-inlaw could easily pass one of the tests for it, which was to count backwards from 100 by seven. She still remembered basic math, as we all do, decades after leaving school. It is a necessary life skill, and to fail to give today’s children this skill is cruel indeed. Penny Powell, Calgary