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Hey kids, put down that calculator
Parents fret today over their children's use of digital devices. They fear that iPods, Xbox 360, or smart phones are taking over their collective brains and lives. Well, think again. The most harmful device your child uses today may very well be their handheld calculator.
Many classrooms, middle school and up, allow calculators to be used. Calculators are particularly helpful with upper-level math problems such as graphing parabolas, calculus and such. But, in many instances, they become overused. Calculators are sometimes being used to do basic arithmetic operations when a student lacks the underlying math skill. Calculator over-reliance is responsible for atrophied mental math skills. If left uncorrected, the lack of mental math skills will lead to problems not only in their next grade level, but beyond that in executing life’s daily challenges.
Mathematicians have always searched for efficient ways to perform mundane calculations to free their minds to focus on more complex problems. The abacus and slide-rule are two such examples. Thus, the real question is not “if” to use a calculator, but “when.”
There are many opinions as to when it is OK to allow a child to use a calculator. With all the divergent points of view, what’s a parent to do?
Here's a simple test. If your child is currently using a calculator in class, give them this quick quiz below. They should be able to answer each question in their head within about 2 seconds.
9 times 7 [63]
17 minus 9 [8]
68 plus 15 [83]
72 divided by 8 [9]
80 times 3 [240]
51 minus 14 [37]
7 times 8 [56]
24 divided by 3 [8]
8 plus 7 [15]
150 divided by 25 [6]
If your child can do most of the above exercises in their head with relative ease, you can feel pretty confident they are not using a calculator in class as a crutch. If they don't fare so well, don’t worry so much about their Facebook, smart phone and texting usage ...worry instead about their over-reliance on calculators.
Mark Ahrens
Milford
Many classrooms, middle school and up, allow calculators to be used. Calculators are particularly helpful with upper-level math problems such as graphing parabolas, calculus and such. But, in many instances, they become overused. Calculators are sometimes being used to do basic arithmetic operations when a student lacks the underlying math skill. Calculator over-reliance is responsible for atrophied mental math skills. If left uncorrected, the lack of mental math skills will lead to problems not only in their next grade level, but beyond that in executing life’s daily challenges.
Mathematicians have always searched for efficient ways to perform mundane calculations to free their minds to focus on more complex problems. The abacus and slide-rule are two such examples. Thus, the real question is not “if” to use a calculator, but “when.”
There are many opinions as to when it is OK to allow a child to use a calculator. With all the divergent points of view, what’s a parent to do?
Here's a simple test. If your child is currently using a calculator in class, give them this quick quiz below. They should be able to answer each question in their head within about 2 seconds.
9 times 7 [63]
17 minus 9 [8]
68 plus 15 [83]
72 divided by 8 [9]
80 times 3 [240]
51 minus 14 [37]
7 times 8 [56]
24 divided by 3 [8]
8 plus 7 [15]
150 divided by 25 [6]
If your child can do most of the above exercises in their head with relative ease, you can feel pretty confident they are not using a calculator in class as a crutch. If they don't fare so well, don’t worry so much about their Facebook, smart phone and texting usage ...worry instead about their over-reliance on calculators.
Mark Ahrens
Milford
posted by Matt DeRienzo at
10:11 PM
2 Comments:
Agreed. And without doing the mental math, you will never "feel" the answers, even less so with electronic devices -- analog devices like an abacus or a sliderule are good teaching tools.
To paraphrase an aerodynamics professor (who said it about equations of flight) when the student says "I am trying to memorize the times table", the teacher says "That's wrong! Did you 'memorize' your name? Of course not! You simply know it."
But this predates calculators, at least as far back as the New Math. My father tutored math and physics at the high school and college level, and he would often as a new student "What's 7 tmes 8?" to see how much work he had ahead of him.
Bravo, Mark. Believe it or not, back in high school, I was actually given a lower grade on a Trigonometry test because I was calculating sines, cosines and tangents by hand instead of using a calculator. I didn't get the numbers wrong, mind you, but my teacher said "I need to learn how to use a calculator" (not that he was about to buy one for me, of course).
I asked him what had more value, actually learning the equations and how they work, or learning how to press ONE button to get the answer?
Sadly, he liked me even less after that question.
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