“Math is best learned through the arm,” a colleague once told me. I still think he’s right.

Calculators are a huge enabling technology for scientists, engineers, accountants, doctors, lawyers, construction workers — just about anybody. Anybody, that is, except middle school math students. Oh it’s an enabler for them too — it enables them to avoid learning fundamental algorithms. Calculators prevent them from getting comfortable with the idea of place value. Calculators severely delay learning of multiplication and division facts. Calculators waste incalculable quantities of time when students use them to do what mental math can accomplish in a second or less.

I detect a swing of the pendulum (yet again) away from the calculator in the classroom. I know of few teachers (none actually) who think calculators have improved math education. I know plenty who believe it has damaged it. Less than half the students in my class can reliably multiply or divide 2 and 3 digit numbers without a calculator. That’s a problem.

Calculators should not be allowed through the door of an elementary school (unless it’s in the pocket or purse of the book keeper).

Yes I want the folks who build the bridges and design the aircraft to use calculators — good ones! But I also want then to be good at math