I know of one elementary school teacher who uses a calculator to divide by 10.  She is anxious the moment a calculation is mentioned and likely transmits this anxiety to her students.  

There should be madatory text books.  My province, Alberta, has evidently decided the teachers can create the lessons themselves.  Elementary school teachers have better things to do than recreate the wheel each day for the pupils.  
The only way to catch the math phobics and innumerates is to test them not just when they apply to teach but periodically through their careers.  

As drugerous as times tables are, children do enjoy memberization and perhaps they can use this knowledge to understand the relationships between numbers.    It is akin to claiming writing can be learned without grammar, syntatics, word order, punctuation, and spelling.  When I confront the new, experiential math cheer leaders, I simply reply in disjointed sentences to mimic what has been done in math.