The Math department seems to have its own bug bear. Their equivalent of Google Translator- aka the greatest enemy of the learning process – is something they call “a graphing calculator.” I grew up in a simpler time and built all my graphs by hand, memorizing all the formulae. But today’s mathematicians have endless stories of shooing students away from the evil calculator.
5 responses to “The Evil Calculator ”
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I disagree. Shunning the calculator is more like shunning a computer in the classroom. A graphical calculator is just a specialized computer and should be used as such.
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I’ve had classes where it was required. I’ve had classes where it was strongly recommended, since unless you managed to do everything in your head absolutely right the first time or unless you could write very, very fast, you would not finish the exams. Or the homework, in the case of some of the computational math. I’ve also had classes where it wasn’t required because there was simply no use for it in whatever we were doing. And one class where it was banned for no particular reason. It made homework a bitch, since even though you had to use a calculator to check your work, you still had to write out tedious derivations and mini-proofs by hand (every single step had to be there, complete with an explanation in complete sentences as to what you were doing and why. Each homework set took about half a ream of paper to complete). If I’d been able to use a calculator more often with that class, it would have made my life fifty times easier. That was a hellish semester, though only in part because of that particular class. And my visualization of functions and whatnot did not get very much better.
There are somethings you should not have to use a calculator for. The stuff you’re talking about–memorizing and drawing basic graphs, memorizing basic formulas–they all have to happen at some point. But there does come a point where graphing calculators are essential, because visualization is extraordinarily difficult, or you’re dealing with an insane matrix, or you have a computational problem that must be solved by brute force. The important thing to remember is that a calculator is just a tool. It’s not the end-all-be-all. It’s not the solution to every problem. The student still has to think and be able to say what they’re doing in real words, when it comes to college and professional level mathematics. Otherwise they learn nothing. It doesn’t mean the graphing calculator isn’t a useful tool, though.
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“Their equivalent of Google Translator- aka the greatest enemy of the learning process”
Google Translator is wonderful IF you know how to use it AND remember what its many and serious limitations are. I probably use it every day and love it and it’s hard for me to imagine life or work without it.
But making it clear what the limitations are to students inclined to take anything they see at face value can be a very tough sell.
One effective way is to give students a google translated text (in your case from Spanish to English) and telling them to fix it. It’s not enough to completely break the spell but it can awaken some of the skills they need to use it effectively.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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