Don’t blame the maths teachers, Mr Quinn

EDUCATION Minister Ruairi Quinn should stop agonising over the exact university qualifications of our maths teachers and ask, instead, just why have national schools stopped teaching the Multiplication Table, and who made the decision to drop it?

I know of gifted and motivated pupils who are being held back at Junior Cert Maths (higher) because they are struggling with their ‘times tables’. At this point of their careers, these facts should be ‘in the blood’. Numbers should be familiar to them. They were told at national school that they had a Tables Book instead. But this is teaching young children to walk with a crutch instead of on their own two legs.

This disastrous experiment was adopted decades ago in the English-speaking world, and has had a dreadful effect on maths and engineering at university. Minister Quinn, here is something concrete you can do immediately — attack the problem at the root, instead of trying to blame Maths teachers.