Nagging Math issue

I remember having my Grade Four teacher, Mr. Purchase, tell us that we would not be permitted to graduate from Grade 4 until we learned our multiplication tables.  It created some anxiety, but those tables were learned and not forgotten.  Mind you, this was back in the late 70s and we had to master a number of items that are now referred to as the basics.  I like to think of those skills as foundational skills that are needed to build and develop other skills.  Similarly, if a simple sentence can't be composed, how can a paragraph be written?

I say all of this with the following editorial in mind:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/math-eqao-scores-1.4270882

I was the Grade 6 teacher last year and I had concerns about how the students would do on the Math portion of the EQAO assessment.  While there were probably no old-school type Arithmetic questions, having a solid grasp at answering these questions would help boost our students' success in Math.  If students felt more comfortable and confident with the foundational skills (I will not use the word basics, since it seems to set off alarms in the heads of some folk), this would ease up on a lot of t he Math Anxiety that our sons and daughters seem to articulate.

An Inquiry based approach to Math is great, but skills must be established first.  Learning how to play Jazz on the piano is awesome, but without the foundational skills, it will probably sound wretched.  I would like to see the Math curriculum's breadth ease up a bit so we could create a generation of students who won't ever say they hate Math and do much better on the assessments they are required to complete.  To be continued, for sure.