I used a slide rule to get my first college degree but soon hand held devices could get many more decimal places with the same understanding. Next came devices that could run a simple algorithm and the power of the digital computer was unleashed.
Better tools led to better engineers and it was not the use of the tool that led us to become socialist idiots. The teacher’s union has long held that teachers should teach the new tools too, they will do practically anything to keep the gravy train going.
The use of devices to play games may be teaching our kids that they do not need to study things that are difficult. If so, this is why they don’t build any ability to think for themselves.
I have the belief that calculators should be banned in K-12.
If you want the kid to understand, machines can’t do the job.
I worked in a family business for eight years before I went back to school. By that time every engineering student I knew was pining after the best programmable scientific calculator they could afford. I was no different than the rest. Of course I wanted the best HP, but had to settle for a cheaper Casio graphing calculator. I also had a little radio shack TRS 80 handheld computer that had BASIC built in which was pretty handy.
These were useful devices and in many ways allowed students to go beyond what we would have been able to achieve without them. But these days it seems like things have gone off the rails and many students seem to be losing there ability to reason out even basic problems.
A couple weeks ago I cut down six tall trees in our front yard. The tallest was 120 feet according to my calculations using one of those walk behind measuring devices with a wheel and an adjustable protractor with a level. I wanted to make sure that when I dropped it in the right direction that it would not take out the neighbors’ fence. My best friend was an engineering student also, so I asked him to double check my calculations and measurements. He had forgotten all of these basic trigonometric functions that we both learned when we were about 12. Then the neighbor came out to see what we were up to. He actually spent almost his entire career working as an aeronautic engineer. He had an app on his phone that cost $2 and could be used to figure the height of just about anything using the camera, but he was also having a bit of trouble remembering the basic trigonometry. It was actually quite funny to me.