Calculators are destroying civilization!

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Calculators have rendered my stupid classmates unable to do mental math. They are addicted to calculators. Some of them don't know all their times tables. I heard once of someone who couldn't add numbers like 12 and 16 or something like that. it was a personal account from a teacher.
I'd like to quote a different teacher.
"myspace and calculators are destroying civilization!"

Laziness and greed are destroying civilization.

Civilization is destroying civilization.

Heh, if they can't do intermediate mental math properly, then they will fail at life.

I've experienced some of this tutoring... I can't believe it sometimes... it isn't that hard. I am sure these people know other more advanced things but they don't take the time to work the math out and get into the head.

I don't even care if people aren't fast with it, but you should be able to multiply, add and divide using long hand.

Whenever there is a crutch it always hurts education. As an example, I had a book I was learning how to play Bass Guitar out of... the book hand TAB and notation. Even though I wanted to learn Bass Clef, my mind always went back to the TAB... no amount of mental gymnastics would change it.

I eventually got another book, one that just dealt in Bass Clef, and I went through it slowly but consistantly and eventually picked it up. It really wasn't that hard, you just had to throw away the Crutch.

I believe these sort of things appear throughout education, and whenever possible a student will take the easy way out. And educators should realize this and throw away the crutches untill the students know what they need to know.

as*holes that don't let people use calculators are holding civilization back from being good.

Calculators don't do us any good, they shouldn't be mandatory for so many things.

Calculators, spell checkers, PDAs, and to some extent even cell phones have rendered the masses just plain stupid. I almost never used a calculator in school, I never use spell checkers or use a calendar PDA or notebook for appointments, and I keep all my phone numbers in my head, and I find that I don't need the electronics to keep track of everything.

In high school, I remember several occasions where we were asked to proofread or grade each other's papers. I would get headaches from the sheer volume of bad spelling (one person actually spelled the word "tube" as "toob" several times) and horrible arithmetic.

Technology is great and it makes our lives easier, but if it costs us our intelligence and independence, what good is it really doing us?

I can do math. It is necessary to know the basics like addition, subtraction, etc. Still, having a calculator is handy for when you need to do complex numbers and in a hurry. As a nurse on a medical wing, it is nice to whip out the calculator and calculate the drip rates on the I.V's. Who has the time on a busy unit to write it all down on paper?
But still, people should know how to do it manually before they go using a calculator.

Meh. There is nothing wrong with calculators, they are a useful tool if used correctly.

I thing the one thing that they don't teach which they should is techniques for numerically approximating things; these techniques used to be more important when using things like slide rules and log tables but they seem to have gone out of fashion. Knowing how to approximate is an important numerical skill and is also important as a plausibilty check for calculations.

Mathematicians have used calculators for hundreds of years, it is just that in years gone by, the calculators used to be humans (very often women) as opposed to electrical/mechanical devices.