If a whole lot of number-crunching is needed, I’ll bet euros to dollars you’re on a computer anyway, and understanding the symbolic manipulations of a computer language is, again, essential.

A “no calculators” rule sounds to me like slapping a Band-Aid on the problem, one which won’t stick very well anyway. My hunch is that we should be transitioning the whole curriculum over to problems where calculators just aren’t that helpful. That said, all the different ways one can destroy calculators — liquid nitrogen, trebuchet, etc. — might themselves offer “teachable moments.”

I like these ideas. Too often teachers of lower level mathematics courses ASSUME that they are helping prepare students for higher level courses by teaching them calculator skills. I have addressed this issue with some of them in the past and they tell me I am the one that needs to change. What is wrong with these people? They are creating “happy idiots” who know very little mathematics when they get to my classes and are now required to math without a calculator and learn the skills that they were not taught when they should have been. Maybe all math teachers should also be required to teach a year of Calculus so that they know where the students are heading. After this type of experience they may not be as quick to substitute the calcuator for skills they should be teaching.

It’s probably not worth your time to read a whole lot about it — heck, I suppose I should really be working on Eureka instead of writing blog posts like this.

the only thing I can see that abolishing fractions will do is make teaching division harder.

Is this a joke? At the very least, it seems like quite an understatement. It seems abolishing fractions means abolishing division as well. After all, what’s the difference between the fraction 3/2 and 3 divided by 2?

Is Dennis DeTurck suggesting that we restrict attention to integers? Or maybe he accepts decimals like 1.5, but thinks we shouldn’t explain what they mean?

I haven’t had time to read his opinions, and I’m not sure I should find time.

And yes, I did learn how to take square roots by hand . . . in elementary school if you can believe it (of course it was an extension of all that long division training that we did) . . . in the 1960s . . . in the time before calculators and when we were taught all sorts of tricks for mental math. Anecdote . . . we gave your maternal grandfather a little five function calculator back in the late 70s. It came with a little book of “calculator tricks you can do.” He would check the calculator’s answers . . . didn’t trust it. Of course, this is the man who divided fractions in his head. You have a lot of Grandma Stacey in you . . . but a bunch of Grandad Chilton, too.

I sat in an Advanced Project Management class last fall and watched people yank out calculators to do some “earned value” problems (simple algebra equation stuff) and we’re giving ludicrous answers (magnitudes off) because of decimal issues. These are folks with college degrees . . . managing projects. So scary. There was no “intuitiveness.” I didn’t even take a calculator to class and just turned my paper over and did the multiplication and division the old way. I could even “simplify” before I started my division!

I was astonished that my daughter, in 6th grade, didn’t understand what the decimal places mean, IOW powers of ten. How can you understand math if you don’t know what the numbers mean?

I teach low-level chemistry. When I do percent composition, the kids don’t understand that “percent” means the same as “parts per hundred.” They plug numbers into the calculators and get an answer, and have no idea whether it it makes sense. They will tell me that a copper containing compound is 450% copper, and don’t realize that is a ridiculous answer.

I think that is one of the worst aspects of focusing on year-end testing. The emphasis on getting an answer rather than understanding.

I have a two stage solution: First, require that all teachers, including pre-k, have a year of calculus and a year of physics. Second, take all of the calculators in the elementary schools and middle schools and beat them into little pieces.

I tried looking at his web-page, but couldn’t seem to find anything on this topic. I’d like to at least see some context for this bizarre idea that might make it seem even a little less insane.

One math professor at my school has been quoted as saying
“If you don’t know how to add fractions, you don’t know how to think.”

I don’t know what the context was exactly, but I do know he’s an outspoken critic of many of the math education reform proposals that have come about.

Ain’t math fun. lol