Bm@il
Every week BARBARA FISHER looks at issues that affect us all – the issues that get you talking. You can join in by emailing bmailbarbara@gmail.com SCHOOL STANDARDS minister Nick Gibb wants primary pupils to learn multiplication tables. Great I say.
This may surprise anyone who knows that when I was trained as a teacher we were told that this was bad.
To learn tables by rote as I, and generations before me, had done, was practically the work of the devil when we were schooled in the trendy new teaching methods.
I think it would be nice to trust the schools on this however, as I’m not so keen on a compulsory test being introduced to ensure all primary pupils know tables up to 12 times by the age of nine.
Teachers like me trained in the ‘new’ methods of the 1960s and 70s were told not to teach tables. Or use text books. Ever.
The trendy new methods were admirable in intent: children should not have to learn things at the same time, as they all develop at different speeds.
Group teaching was in. Formal class teaching with children sitting in rows was out.
I still think that teaching children as individuals is right, but I also now believe it was wrong to throw the baby out with the bath water, as so often happens in education.
I remember long nights while on teaching practice cutting out assignment cards or trying to work out how maths could fit in to the ‘project method’. This was teaching all subjects around a common theme.
For example, let’s imagine the subject (chosen by the teacher) was Water. Creative writing could be about the sea, geography about floods and tsunamis, science could cover how we get water to our taps.
For RE (which was compulsory then) there was the story of the Great Flood, and there were endless possibilities for drama, from submarines to shark adventures.
And, er… Maths. Oh yes, capacity. But it didn’t always work out so neatly.
In the 70s before the National Curriculum, I sneakily taught times tables.
We clapped in time, stamped our feet as we chanted them parrotfashion like a Gospel choir. ‘Five twos are ten, six twos are 12’. It was great fun and it helped them no end with their maths.
One day an HMI (Her Majesty’s Inspector, pre-Ofsted) arrived unexpectedly and caught me at it. ‘Are you teaching TABLES?’ she asked as if I were leading them to a life of crime. I held my breath. So did the children. They enjoy it, I said.
Luckily, she seemed amused by my jolly method of teaching and let it go. I suspect she was also secretly pleased.