Faith and Times Tables

I attended a day of reflection where a concept I've encountered before was discussed, a concept that really resonates with me, the idea that as each Sunday is a celebration of the paschal mystery, so every week the days leading up to it can be a "mini-Triduum," the Friday and Saturday may always serve as preparation for the glorious Third Day.
But as before, when I broached the idea of weekly confession, (this time, I also suggested the traditional Friday abstinence, or some other form of fast,) I was looked at by the presenter as if I had come from Mars, or at least, from the 19th century, and told kindly that the Church does not encourage such frequent reception of the sacrament of Reconciliation "any more."
And I don't remember much after that, as my mind wandered, naturally enough, to the subject of arithmetic.
Guilty Secret: I cannot tell you how much 9 times 5 is, or 6 times 7, without a bit of thought.
No, it doesn't actually take me long, but there is an "extra step" involved for some simple problems, it isn't "automatic." I can usually "automatically" recall what a x (b-1) is, and then add a to that answer.
So there, I did not learn my times tables.
(Lest you think this is because I am a mathematics idiot, I got a 780 on my Math SAT at the age of 15.)
Now, while it is very like me to have an excuse for everything, in this case I think I am justified in blaming not myself but the educational methods in vogue at the time I should have learned them.
It was called "New Math."
Parents were actively discouraged from anything that might hint of "drilling," we were to learn concepts and theories. We would absorb that and the "just the facts, m'a'm" part of things would take care of itself.
So there wasn't really much most parents could help you with, unless they had had the opportunity to learn the proper buzz words, and wax poetic about "intersecting sets" and "arrays" and such.
(I just remembered, something similar had been going on in reading pedagogy, some tried to teach reading by recognizing the shapes of words, but I escaped that influence by being a pretty solid reader before kindergarten.)
And the reason the whole dang thing didn't work was it's stubborn refusal to take advantage of the child's greatest strength -- the nearly empty, sponge-like mind that can learn virtually anything by committing to memory.
Learning by heart.
We stopped trying to learn by heart.
I think the great catechetical failure of the latter half of the 20th c. (which only the most Panglossian of "Spirit of Vatican II" types denies we are still in the grips of,) began when parents of simple faith were told that what they had and could hand on, what they knew and could teach -- no longer mattered, and in some cases, no longer obtained.
The Domestic Church, the Primary Catechists were suddenly confronted with People in Authority telling them, you know that thing you thought you knew you HAD to do?
You don't.
In fact, you SHOULDN'T.
And from now on in many cases you CAN'T.
The "times tables" of the faith, the results as opposed to the theories or the process, the WHAT we do as opposed to the WHY we do it, the rituals of worship as opposed to the theology -- people stopped handing them on.
We substituted talking about worshiping for actually worshiping.