NCTM and "Problem Solving"

A teacher shared some notes taken during one of the first faculty meetings of the school year at a city public school:

The speaker, an administrator, said, "We used to teach isolated facts. We would drill on multiplication tables but would never use them in problem solving. The NCTM recommends that we now focus on problem solving."

In the margin, I wrote, "100% bull."

One thing the NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) is good for is revisionist history. The idea that we used to teach students the multiplication table, and then never used that information in solving math problems is preposterous. One of the worst things to happen to math education in this country is the NCTM, with their zeal for so-called problem solving. In the real world, if you teach basic skills (facility with number facts, fractions, decimals, percents, algebra, etc.) and have students use these facts to solve problems (without using calculators) then what you end up with is really good problem solvers!

But in the NCTM universe, if you depend on a calculator for your number facts, you can just jump in with your "problem solving." Sounds reasonable enough, but what you end up with is a student who sees "A man has 5 trucks, and each truck holds 10 cases"--immediately adding 5+10 (on the calculator, natch) for the answer of 15 cases. Students who don't know beans about number facts won't be able to solve problems, no matter how much you focus on problem solving!

This isn't a case of putting the cart before the horse, this is a case of removing the horse entirely!