Friday, March 19, 2010

Are calculators making our children dumb?

My parents constantly told me that I had it easy because I was able to
use a calculator in my grade 10 physics courses. They had to use a
slide rule. I can't imagine how frustrating using and caring for a
slide rule must be.

I've been restraining from telling my children how easy they have it
being able to do their homework on a laptop. Your rough draft becomes
your final draft with a few keystrokes. You no longer have to re-write
the entire document to correct mistakes, it's simply a matter of
highlighting offending passages and hitting a delete key. But isn't
this just working smarter?

You can solve twenty physics problems in the amount of time it took to
solve just one in the past. This should allow you to harness more of
your attention span and tie everything together.

So are calculators making our children dumb? Only if you take them away.

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