Multiplication training in Australian education circa 1960

[sydneygb]

In the film "Fahrenheit 451" British schoolchildren can be heard chanting their times tables (e.g. "Nine sixteens are a hundred and forty-four, nine seventeens are a hundred and fifty-three", etc.). Was this system also used by the Australian schools (specifically in the fifties and sixties; character in question was born in 1954)? And how high

Comments

[blue_condition]

From what I recall of school in the UK in the early 70s, tables up to 12x12 were taught by rote (probably because of the use of 12 in feet/inches and pence/shillings).

[blue_condition]

I suspect Truffaut made them learn tables beyond 12x12 to emphasise the hollowness of memorising the books... ;)

[whiteadelphi]

Agreed; they only went up to 12 where I was, too. And all of our official tables and such on primary school/high school note books list the tables up to 12 as well.

[brsis]

Nobody in the UK learns their times tables up to nineteen - that was probably a thematic device of some kind.

The standard tables went from two to twelve, pre decimilisation, and at some point of which I'm not completely sure (But was certainly later than 1970) it became two to ten. You'll still find a good number of modern kids who know their elevens because they're easy, but practically no-one knows their twelves anymore. Randomness aside, I think much of the Western world used the same system - America, Australia, most of Europe...

[pewter_alyssum]

American here! I'm a high school student, and everyone I know had to learn up to the twelve times table in third or fourth grade. Nobody went higher than twelve, but they all knew the table up to 144. I'm 99% sure that they still do it that way here because we silly Americans don't really use metric.

[brsis]

... Really?

I thought America used kilometres and that?

[pewter_alyssum]

They do in high school classrooms, science labs and such...but the average person knows miles, feet, and inches and can't think in metric terms worth a damn. Looking at a road, I don't know how long a kilometer is, but I can roughly estimate a mile.

Americans: Refusing to be sensible since 1776.

[katiefoolery]

That's exactly the same for me. We chanted our way up to twelve times twelve. We also had times tables races in maths classes where we were given a blank grid with 1,2,3,...12 across the top and down the sides and the fastest person to fill in all of the squares would win a prize.

I used to work out the thirteen and fourteen times tables for my own amusement (because I liked maths in primary school) but we never had to learn anything above twelve.