These last two weeks I have been in and out of elementary and middle schools. Great chance to peek at math texts. And you know what? I am not finding the books that say that multiplication is repeated addition.

Today I look at some (Scott Foresman?) whatevers, maybe 3rd, 4th and 5th grade. The book discussed “meanings” with an “s” of multiplication, and ran through several sections that covered repeated addition, skip counting, arrays, and cartesian product.

The arrays, by the way, were of relatively fat dots, meaning, I hope, that half rows or quarter rows could be introduced at some point in the future.

This whole brouhaha about “stop telling kids multiplication is repeated addition” — do we know that this happens everywhere and all the time? Are there textbooks that get it wrong?

Or was Devlin just jousting with imaginary opponents?