Role of Calculators in Schools :: essays research papers

For adults, math is used in many ways, from configuring sales value and tips to figuring gas mileage and averages but for children it sometimes seems as if the except time for math is for homework and tests. The initial purpose for school days in this department is for the students to see and understand the practical uses of it, however it is controversial that the use of teaching with calculators changes this idea. In the short essay Ditch the Calculators, the author Diane Hunsaker insinuates that the overuse of calculators in math class defeats the ultimate goal of education expanding the mind and increase students abilities to function as contributing members of society. As society enters the twenty-first vitamin C it seems that teaching and encyclopaedism has an entirely youthful perspective. It seems as though the new technologies that are introduced in school, computers and calculators, are not producing the same effects that learning without them once had. As a colleg e level student I relish that, from my own experience, I am an advanced math student because the rules and principles were drill into my memory and not that of a calculator at a unripened age.      Depending on ones perspective, the use of calculators at the elementary school level is seen as either the solution to or cause of many of the problems affecting math education in this country. It has been known for a languish time that early experience is able to shape the brain and behavior. In the stages of learning at a young age, to fully grasp a concept, a child must understand the principles how and why in bon ton to apply any significance or relation to anything. This particularly applies to such(prenominal) a subject as that of math. Diane Hunsaker expresses her view as well in the following quote Math is as much about intentional why the rules work as knowing what the rules are (668). It seems that Hunsaker is saying that in the first place rules can b e applied, there must be a metrical unit for them. This concept for math, and in general, trains the mind by exercising figureing skills. It is unmingled that she agrees by examining her direct statement, Math trains the mind. By this she also goes on to say, that by the ability to exercise these particular thinking skills that students are learning to think logically and rationally. I must say, that having the ability to think logically and rationionally in controlled situations has allowed me to progress outside the classroom.