What I am seeing seems to be that dependence on the calculator has short circuited the learning of math and the development of analytical skills. Most students who take high school algebra are not going to be scientists, mathematicians or engineers. These skills are the most important things they should take from their math courses. The computational and analytical skills learned in math often can be applied to a host of everyday problems in business, personal finance, etc. (boldface mine--Darren)
What truly drives me nuts is when students get wrong answers because they don't know how to use the very calculator they brought to class! Then, during a test, they want me to teach them how to use their calculators! It's insanity, truly.
My solution, keeping in mind that I teach pre-calculus and below:
- Algebra I, no calculators except for square roots. And you can bet we go over those square root tables in the back of the book, too!
- Algebra II, you can use it, but it won't help you much. Factoring, conic sections, logarithms--I'll make sure you understand the underlying concepts, and you'll understand them without a calculator.
- Pre-calc, no graphing calculator allowed, unless it has No. 2 stenciled on it near the eraser. You need to understand where those sin/cos/tan numbers your calculator gives you are coming from.
Our calculus teachers, and some others, think I should teach and promote graphing calculator usage in my pre-calc classes. I'd be amenable to it if there were a reason to use a graphing calculator above and beyond solving problems that are best solved by graphing, like sin x = cos x + tan x or something equally silly.
Will this debate ever go away?