[cartan]

I agree totally. I was horrified the first time I saw a picture of a college lecture where every student had a laptop in front of him. It was intuitively clear to me that nothing good will come out of this development.

You go to class to learn how to think. Pencil and paper should be the only tools used. Computers are a distraction. As are calculators. Use your brain! It does not matter that you will probably use a computer later, when you have a real job. You do not use a forklift for lifting dumbbells, either, do you?

[rstrahan]

As fast as they throw stuff at students today, you cannot write fast enough with pen and paper.

[muir_redwoods]

I’m sorry but if you were teaching agriculture would you use oxen and a wooden plow? I had a 60-something professor in my Operations Management course in B-school. He addressed this issue by claiming that teaching obsolete/unnecessary processes (like arithmetic calculation) to grad students who learned the process in grade school was simply fraud. Background is fine but teach what graduates will be expected to know and do.