One of the sons in the house is in the last year of high school and as math is not his favorite subject he’s only now raised his need of a graphing calculator. I did a perfunctory research of the market and purchased a generic Texas Instruments model for around €70.
One thing that struck me is that today’s calculators aren’t that much different than the ones I remember when I was a first-year college student, lo so many years ago. We’re still looking at a plethora of multiply-labeled buttons, grayscale screens, and extremely limited memory. In an age where a basic calculator is practically disposable, memory is cheap and handheld UI innovation rampant thanks to cellphones and computers, it’s a bit weird to see a tech area looking so stable.
Part of the reason is of course that if you’re dealing with students, you don’t want them to be too connected or have too much computing at their disposal during exams. But that just raises another questions. Barring global catastrophe (in which case basic math skills would be nice to have, but knowledge of agriculture even more desirable) any pupil attending higher education will have a calculator within reach for the rest of their lives.
So, basic arithmetic has been automated, and in fact, even quite complicated algebra has been too, thanks to tools like Mathematica and Maple. In fact, as long as you have access to the web Wolfram Alpha will solve most equations faster than you can type them in.
Is it time to face the fact that doing arithmetic with pen and paper is like making pots on a pottery wheel? It’s a nice craft, probably will be quite popular for a small part of the population, but it’s essentially not needed in a modern society?
Please note I’m not saying mathematics is obsolete. It’s probably more important than ever. But I do think we need to find a better way of teaching it than just mechanically learning rules like long division and decomposition of factors. Leave the drudgery of math to the computers, and try to move on to teach the actual use of math in real life.