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

[clio75]

I was a student at a Catholic primary school in NSW in the 80's. We learnt our times tables up to the 15's. Not for any particular reason, other than we had a class competition on speed and accuracy. I guess the teacher wanted to stretch it out and not have the better mathematicians finish way before the others.

I remember standing up and chanting the times tables with everyone else too.

[comicstar]

In my (somewhat backwater) country school we were still reciting them up to 12x12 in 1994, although the year after it was phased out. But in earlier decades, certainly, this was the standard way of learning multiplication in Australian schools. That's the impression I get from my parents and the history component of my teaching course, but of course I can't say first hand...

[kapitankraut]

My father was at school in Adelaide and Darwin during the years you're after and he definitely learned them that way (up to 12x12 at a guess, he certainly recites them that way when berating me for my lack of mathematical knowledge).