Possible death of calculators in education?

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(05-21-2017 01:24 PM)SlideRule Wrote:  This seems very normal to me.

To me as well. I am not a mathematician. For me mathematics is a kit of basic - quite sophisticated though - tools required to get other jobs done. A carpenter does not need to know how to solve Maxwell's equations in order to use an electrically powered circular saw (whose motor can be described with these equations). As long as I know which tools are best for which task I don't need to know how these tools are built.

Recently I talked to a former colleague of my father and friend of our family. Initially a mathematics teacher and later mathematician in the nuclear research environment. He has come to the conclusion that we should not torture our children/grandchildren at school with mathematics (the most hated subject for most of them) the way we do now. Teach them what is needed for life - fractions, percentages, some statistics - and leave the complicated stuff for the 2% who want to be physicists, mathematicians or other scientists which rely on an in-depth understanding of mathematics. Teach all the others languages or sociology instead if we want to have a future.

My son has just now been sitting his last exams (called Abitur in Germany) to finish secondary school. He was part of an experiment - which will end with his class - where students were using a CAS calculator (Ti nSpire in his case) throughout secondary education. The idea was to raise the overall level of mathematics education by leaving the routine tasks to the machine and letting the students do more abstract work. From what I see this experiment has been declared a failure and they will return to "traditional" mathematics teaching with pen an paper. So to say "the death of calculators in education" as the thread title goes, but not in terms of hardware.

Regards
Max