[P.O.E.]

Take away the calculators. They are programmed from a very young age to reach for the device reflexively. Later in life it’s the phone, cash register, whatever.

[mewzilla]

Take away the publik skrewls.

Kids aren’t students.

They’re just the grist for Deep State’s diploma mills.

[oldasrocks]

My feeble mind this am says 5/6 but not sure with the new math if that is right.

[Poser]

“Take away the calculators. They are programmed from a very young age to reach for the device reflexively. Later in life it's the phone, cash register, whatever.”

Bingo. I taught financial accounting for 35 years. Over that time, students lost the ability to estimate the result of a calculation and compare that to the result they read on their calculators. A large percentage of students have no concept of scale. 1,000 and 1,000,000 are the same number in their minds.

I'm from the end of the slide rule generation. That device gives you two or three significant digits but no decimal. You have to figure that out by estimating the result in your own brain. That habit has served me well.

Fractions are simply out of the question for the calculator generation and percents are a mystery to many of them. Calculators should not be allowed in math until fractions and percents are mastered.

I always started the first day of college accounting principles with a short quiz.

1. What is 38 percent of 100?
2. True or False? Adam Smith must have written a book or something.
3. What direction is it to California?

The results were appalling.

[BobL]

“Take away the calculators. They are programmed from a very young age to reach for the device reflexively. Later in life it’s the phone, cash register, whatever.”

My kids NEVER used a calculator for learning math...simply because I wouldn’t let them. Calculator skills are best taught in a Programming class, right next to computer skills, they DO NOT belong in math class because they have nothing to do with learning math.

[ActresponsiblyinVA]

Another success of the teacher’s unions.

[hanamizu]

Take away the calculators.

---

Retired teacher here. Calculators are only a part of the problem.

The fact is that rote memorization has been taken out of math classes. When I was in grade school, and not dodging mastodons, we were forced to memorize our times tables in the third grade. Besides making multiplication something we could do in our heads or on paper for bigger problems, it made things like lowest common denominator doable when we hit fractions in the fifth grade.

And understanding how fractions work, makes algebra a bit easier to master as well. All of that is gone from most schools. If I ask an 8th grader what 4 x 6 is, he or she will pull out a calculator to give me an answer. Only the best and brightest will just ‘know’ the answer. The way math is taught now, kids are exposed to ideas like fractions as early as 2nd grade, but they master very little.

[StrictConstructionist]

The public schools have failed in the United States.

There is more emphasis on leftist propaganda than reading, writing, history, science, and math.

[Osage Orange]

My Dad had a store,,,,I worked in it. I learned how to count back cash payments.

I am sure not very many folks can do that now,.,