We learned the times tables in primary school, they were all up on the wall and we were expected to learn them in our own time and when we felt we knew one well enough the teacher tested us on them individually, and we got a gold star if we got them all right.  I was ok with tables, but misunderstood something about arithmetic right at the beginning and used to guess the answers, and fell behind. 

When I went to high schoool we were told "in algebra the letters can mean anything you like" and I thought I'd never get one wrong again!  Oops.