Stanford University’s Jo Boaler says teachers and parents should stop using math flash cards, stop drilling kids in addition and multiplication and especially stop forcing students to do calculations quickly under time pressure.


Good-bye Mad Minute Mondays, where teachers hand out quiz sheets with 50 problems to be completed in less than a minute. But wait – doesn’t everyone have to learn times tables? No, says Boaler.


Although her position is unorthodox, Boaler, an education professor and researcher, has spent a career trying to prove why it is the best way for kids to learn.






“Drilling without understanding is harmful,” Boaler said in an interview. “I’m not saying that math facts aren’t important. I’m saying that math facts are best learned when we understand them and use them in different situations.”


In a new working paper, “Fluency Without Fear: Research Evidence on the Best Ways to Learn Math Facts,” updated and published online on Jan. 28, 2015, Boaler argues that many common math teaching tools – flash cards, math sprints and repetitive worksheets – are not only unhelpful, but also “damaging.”


And she singles out the new Common Core math curriculum in New York state, saying it misinterprets numerical “fluency” to mean rote memorization and speed.






Boaler’s argument has several parts. She explains that the key to success in math is having something called “number sense,” and number sense is developed through “rich” mathematical problems. Too much emphasis on rote memorization, she says, inhibits students’ abilities to think about numbers creatively, to build them up and break them down. 


She cites her own 2009 study, which found that low-achieving students tended to memorize methods and were unable to interact with numbers flexibly. And she is currently working on a study with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in which she is finding that the lowest performing students in the world are the ones who think math is about memorization. 


Also, Boaler argues that memorization of boring math facts, such as times tables, turns students off from math. Often, they’re high achieving students who have the kind of creative minds that would otherwise excel at it.


 Jo Boaler says these types of math cards, depicted in “Fluency Without Fear,” help students practice math without blind memorization.
Jo Boaler says these types of math cards, depicted in “Fluency Without Fear,” help students practice math without blind memorization.
The most compelling research evidence that Boaler presents is about how time pressure provokes math anxiety in many students. More than a third of students, according to one study cited by Boaler, experience extreme stress around timed tests.


A 2013 University of Chicago study found that that the working memory portion of the brain becomes blocked in stressed students and they cannot access the math facts that they know. Over time, the anxiety builds and their confidence erodes.


Boaler admits not everyone is harmed by timed math quizzes, but doesn’t see anyone benefitting from them either. “Some students are fine with them,” she said. “But when we combine those who are stressed with those who are turned away from math because of them, we have a large section of the U.S. population that goes across all achievement levels.”


I asked Boaler if rote memorization might be a beneficial supplement to a rich mathematics curriculum that emphasizes creative problem solving. Just the way that the fast repetition of scales is useful for a Juilliard musician, for example, or vocabulary drilling is useful for a foreign language student.


But Boaler says that “mathematical ideas” are different, and stands by her position that times tables are unnecessary. “I never memorized my times tables as a child because I grew up in a progressive era in the U.K.,” Boaler said. “It’s never held me back.”