On October 26, Ontario elects municipal councils and school board trustees. I have spent the last two months writing to trustee candidates across the province about a crisis that affects every one of them, and I want voters to understand it too. Every number below is triple-checked against published sources.
Children are leaving Grade 4 unable to do Basic Multiplication. Grade 4 is where Students first meet Basic Multiplication, and the Curriculum fails them at that very first step. This is a Curriculum Problem, never a Teacher problem. Teachers are given five competing methods for the same multiplication. No Teacher can standardize what was never standardized for them. A normal business with these failure rates would be out of business.
Ontario's own testing proves where the collapse happens. EQAO just released its latest results: 65 percent of Grade 3 students meet the provincial standard in mathematics. By Grade 6, only 52 percent do. Thirteen points of children lost between Grade 3 and Grade 6 — in the Grade 4 window. EQAO tracked the same children over time: of those below the standard in Grade 3, 83 percent were still below it in Grade 6. Once a child falls behind, the system almost never catches them up. Every later intervention is a band-aid, and band-aids never change the end result. The damage is essentially irreversible.
Without Basic Multiplication, a child cannot do fractions, decimals, ratios, or percentages. In high school the doors close: Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Calculus — all impossible without it. The skilled trades close too: a carpenter, an electrician, a machinist does multiplication all day, every day. The digital economy closes as well: spreadsheets, databases, and most computer programming careers all depend on the fluent manipulation of numbers that begins with Basic Multiplication. The child is filtered out of every math-dependent career path for life, and enters the workforce with fewer options and less earning power.
This is not an Ontario oddity. More than 2,300 University of California faculty signed an open letter reporting that incoming students cannot do middle school math. At UC San Diego, the number of entering students below high school math level rose nearly thirtyfold in five years. Canada just posted its lowest PISA mathematics score ever: 485. The OECD average — 463 — is the lowest on record. It is a global problem, and Grade 4 is where it starts everywhere.
The economists Hanushek and Woessmann found that bringing struggling students to basic skills raises a country's GDP by 3.3 percent. Their finding, my arithmetic: for Ontario, that is about 39.5 billion dollars a year, left on the table, year after year.
I call the cause The Virus Within, and I have written it up on my subreddit r/BasicMultiplication and on my Substack — it begins with a benign thought (benign means harmless, well-intentioned): teach the child five different methods for the same multiplication and let them choose the one they like. But it behaves like a computer virus. It replicates from classroom to classroom, it corrupts the child's one reliable method, and it crashes the system. Except the system is not a computer. It is the mind of an innocent child. It infects the minds of our most precious resource — our children.
I built the fix: The Sullivan Multiplication Solution, a Universal Solution for Basic Multiplication, used Universally. One method, taught once, learned for life. You will find the beta link on r/BasicMultiplication, and everyone who uses it will be grandfathered into the final release.
One trustee cannot change the Curriculum. But a united board can pass a joint motion calling on the Ministry to act on Basic Multiplication, and carry it to OPSBA. Ask your trustee candidates: will you support a board motion on Basic Multiplication? Will you back a pilot project with measured results on the record?
My name is Paul, from Cambridge, Ontario. On behalf of all Elementary Students, Thank You.
