How Many Times in a Table?

Learning by heart is better for brain. This was a headline that caught my eye yesterday in The Times.
Don't you just love it when something you have been banging on about for the past twenty five years, is picked up by someone who has clout and brings it to public attention? No, this is not a self-congratulatory post. Many, many of my contemporaries will be shaking their heads in disbelief that it has taken so long to come to this conclusion.
So-called Progressive education has done more damage to the academic standards of this country than anything else. I am thinking about education, not in terms of hoop-jumping examination grades, but in terms of basic numeracy, literacy and thinking skills.
"Pupils without the automatic and unconscious ability to do mental arithmetic, and those without facts at their finger tips are unlikely to progress to analytical thinking," said Dr Helen Abadzi.

I just hope there are enough Head teachers out there who can pause, a moment, from their budget-crunching bulldozing to reflect on her findings. Bring back rote-learning. It is not punitive; it is not archaic. The brain is the most precious and complex computer of them all.
Technology, unless we we are careful, will change the way in which the brain functions.
If we are careless we will end up the servant, not the master.

Never too old for a refresher course