There's so much cool mathematics out there that school kids can understand given a good enough teacher. It's really disappointing to me the crud that gets taught in school, but then i remember that a big part of this is the teachers just aren't that inspired. All it takes is one or two good teachers to really change a kids outlook on mathematics.
I might argue that kids should get a double period for math, especially earlier in their school careers — one class to teach the fundamentals, another class to simply explore. The benefit being that critical thinking is enhanced in all academic areas and not just the obvious in mathematics.
My first real mathematical experience was in second grade. My teacher had some hoops on the floor, and was putting coloured shapes inside. Red shapes in one hoop, and triangles in another hoop. But then the problem arose: what to do with the red triangles? It was total magic when she dragged one hoop to overlap with another hoop and placed the red triangle in the overlap. Venn diagrams for six year olds.
And I still can't multiply six times eight! I have to work it out every time...
No offense intended, but if that still bothers you, it's time to learn it.
Either by accepting the offer you got with 5 (that is, memorizing the multiplication table - BTW, it is more fun to do this with 15x15 or 20x20 rather than 10x10).
Or by playing mental calculation games and trying to get high scores in speed.
(Essentially, this is the same as with learning vocabularies for a foreign language. The word "4x3" is translated to the other word "12".)
Maybe your teachers failed to make it interesting to your 5-year-old self. But your current self does seem to be interested, so that can't be the issue anymore.
You can critize your teachers that they didn't make your learn it at 5, but you can't critize them for still not having it learned later as an adult.
Because there aren't any. The prime numbers would be gaps if you pivoted the table into a division table but, alas, that's not how it's presented (even in the context of teaching division.)
It was by solving one of these problems (using math that was above the course I was currently taking) that I started to interact more with the math department and decided to take more advanced classes!
Did they just add it?
I'm using the TLS version, though:
How were you previously trying to find the RSS feed? It's still not obvious to me from the front page that it exists.
The most popular seems to be "Wurzel" [1] (translated: "root").
The target audience of the magazines are students (pupils) at school, as well as young students at university. The articles explain advanced math topics. Not too advanced, of course, but still far outside what they see in school. The articles use formalisms only where they make things more clear. They build on common school knowledge. Advanced formalisms are only okay if they are introduced in the article. And the articles aren't too long. The goal is that everything can be understood by students, if they are interested.
Also, the magazines usually contain reports about math olympiads and similar activities, usually written by participants (i.e. by students, not teachers).
Finally, these contain math exercises. But don't think of school exercises. Think of math olympiad, just that you have more time to solve them. Students send their solutions in and it is published in the magazine which students solved which exercise successfully.
The latter one should not be underestimated - it is more or less how all these magazines started: You have math competition, the students go back to school, and you want to keep in touch with them, so you offer them so solche math puzzles in their free time, give them feedback to their solutions, and do everything they don't feel alone with their mathematical interests. You can do that individually only with so many students, so you start a magazine for a more efficient communication.
[1] http://wurzel.org/