Stephanie Kundrach MA 481 May 4, 2010 Calculators vs.

Math Knowledge In schools today, the subject of mathematics has become a struggle between students and teachers. Most students in todays society dont like math class and they don't care about what teachers have to offer them. Students would rather just have a calculator tell them the answer; than discover why things are happening or what the calculator is doing. The students have become too dependent on the calculator to tell them the answer; they have lost the basic math skills they need in life. It becomes hard to tell the difference between apathy, and not understanding. Students need to know the basics before moving on to harder math, where a calculator may be needed to assist them but can not solve the whole problem. A calculator should be a tool for the worker, not the worker itself, and many students today have difficulty in seeing that divide. At Brush High School, in an Integrated Algebra 1 class, students were given the same test on two different days. The test was made up of twenty simple math problems, using addition, subtraction and multiplication. Some of the problems involved order of operations, fractions, and negative numbers. The students were allowed to use their calculators for the first test, and most

of the students got perfect scores. A few of the students missed the concept of order of operations, and when they typed the problem into their calculator they got the wrong answer out. On the second day, the students took the same test without using a calculator, and not one student was able to get a perfect score. When analyzing the tests and noticing what students were missing, it was clear that most of them had no number sense and lost most of their arithmetic. The questions that were most missed were dealing with negative numbers. Students will look at a problem like, -8 - 7, and will do 8 7 instead and slap a negative sign in front of the answer. They solve other problems similarly, such as -8 + 7. Somewhere along the way, students lost the idea of a number line. With multiplication, the students understand that two negatives becomes a positive number, but when a teacher says that when someone subtracts a negative, they are actually adding, it goes over the students heads. In my observations, it seems that most students have problems with any solution that requires more than two steps. They want to put the equation into their calculator, do the plug and chug, and end up with an answer that required no actual thought or critical thinking. There is no desire to see what the calculator is doing, and no sense of exploration in discovering how to do the problems themselves. This is a problem for a number of reasons. Obviously, we intend math to be used as a life skill, but life problems are never

as diluted as they are in a textbook. There is extraneous and missing information that mucks up the problem that kids wont be able to solve without applying critical thinking. There are many causes for this problem. One main one is standardized testing. Standardized tests take time out of a school schedule and require a teacher to teach for the test. A standardized test doesnt care if a student really understands the concepts, it only cares if they can enter the numbers into the calculator to make the right answers come out. So teachers teach the kids how to use the calculator instead of how to solve the problems. Rather than prodding them to get a solution themselves, theyll just tell the kids to use a calculator instead. Math builds on itself, but teachers sometimes prefer to take a quick solution instead of reminding their students of that fact. If asked to find factors of a number, instead of showing the steps involved, its easier just to show them how to have a calculator do it. Another cause was touched on briefly earlier, textbooks. Textbooks dont promote the sense of exploration desired. Very rarely is there a problem in a textbook that has more or less than the necessary amount of information, so problems dont require critical thinking. Students just try to figure out what goes where as quickly as possible, so they can use their calculators to do the rest. There is a difference between using a calculator as a tool versus using it for the solution. Its not a mistake to use calculators in schools, but they

should not be the only answer. The way teachers are using calculators is wrong and being abused by the students. They are allowing the kids to find the easy way out. Calculators should be allowed to help solving extensive mathematical problems, or used to check an answer in the end, but it should not be the answer. Students dont see the potential benefits of a problem: the life skills gained, the critical thinking abilities they learn. Somewhere in their education career, they associate math with plugging in numbers, and getting an answer out. There is more to math than just doing simple arithmetic. The problem with trying to get away from the plug and chug method is that people have a fear of math. They feel that they cant understand problems because they deal with numbers. Students see a math equation and they have no idea what to do with it, and feel that there is no way they will ever use that in life. But trying relating the problem to real life by giving them a story problem is no better, because many students get lost in trying to pick out the important information. For some reason, the fear of math becomes a lose/lose situation. The students want to know how they can use math in real life, but when teachers try to show them how it is used, they shut down by saying there are too many steps. For some reason, numbers are a foreign language for people; they have no interest in learning them. People use math in their everyday life but they dont want to admit it or don't see it. The word, math is a hated or feared word, and the fact that technology is so convenient now, allows the fear of understanding math to grow. People feel

that if a computer can do the work for them, they shouldnt even bother to learn it themselves. There is a small difference when comparing math levels. I find that the lower-level math students have no tolerance for why we study or for exploration. It is a question of how rather than why. If attempted, the students tend to shut down and lose what they retained before. Its too much in-depth material and they rarely have the spirit of discovery required to investigate the problems. Honors students are more excited for the why and are interested in it, but theres rarely time to cover the material in depth. Time is limited and students need to learn the material for standardized testing, so the how always takes precedence and can only be expanded upon given some extra time. Both have a similar problem of prior learning habits. Math has been taught that way to them their entire lives. So, to them, that is how its meant to be taught. Even the honors students see it as something extra that they dont really have to know. Learning why things are the way they are becomes too time-exhaustive. Its a lot simpler to add two M&Ms and two M&Ms than it is to investigate why the area under a formulas curve is its integral. Students should not be able to use a calculator in school until they reach high school. Once the calculator is introduced, it should only be used as a tool to work through problems at a faster pace. Mrs. Feare, math teacher at Brush High School says that she wants to see students thinking more analytically

about each problem and only apply their calculator and plug and chug for the final stage in a solution. In private schools, students are not allowed to have a calculator until the ninth grade. Where as in public schools students are using calculators as early as the fifth grade. Giving the young minds a calculator at such an early age, allows them to think I dont have to know how to do this, the calculator does it for me. They are not being taught the importance of knowing their math facts, they also will not be able to distinguish a tool versus the solver. Having the calculator as a solver will hinder them later on in math. They will not know if an answer seems reasonable. The student may have punched something wrong into the calculator and not have known it, but will not even recognize when an answer may be off. Another Brush Teacher, Mr. Day, has said that students now are too dependent on the calculators that they are unable to recognize factors of numbers. They dont even know that the number two is always a factor of any even number. Calculators should only be used to help a student solve in higher math, or be there to check answers. Students need to know and understand the process of problem solving. There is more to math then just pushing buttons. It is hard to say what the solutions are for this problem. Calculators are useful pieces of technology, but at the same time they can be damaging. The one thing that has been agreed over the course of the year, is that students are losing their number sense, and losing important math skills by depending on a calculator. They feel that the calculator can do all the work, so they dont have to. If a problem has more than two steps involved, the students dont

want anything to do with it. It seems that what teachers want students to learn, and how we actually teach them are becoming two totally different things. It seems apparent that it starts with the lower level grades. High school teachers expect their students to be able to follow simple arithmetic problems without using a calculator. Teachers too often will teach students the full way of completing a problem, but then teach the calculator solution the same or next day. This reinforces for the students that they don't need to know the long way and gives them no practice with it. It would be better to keep the quick way hidden from the students longer and require them to do some work with the full solution. Students want the quick fix, they just want to be done with what they are doing and dont want to think about it again. Teachers need to practice how they expect the students to work, if they want them to learn these facts fast, then give them a calculator, but if they want them to learn and understand what is going on, dont allow calculators. As a future math teacher, I also believe that students should not be allowed to use a calculator until they reach high school. The basic facts are important for people to know, and they are being lost by the use of technology. As the use of technology goes up, the skills in math tend to go down. It can be easy to lose math skills without consistent use, and even harder to gain back the ability later. For the past few months doing my student teaching, I have been struggling with students trying to get them to work with high level math, but they are so lost, because they dont understand the basic material. This is now discouraging students away from math, desire

to learn, and desire for a good grade. Sometimes the students feel so lost, they dont know where to go, so they just give up. Teachers for the younger grades need to put more emphasis on doing math by hand, and working on their math facts, so that they can achieve high math later on in life. In schools today, teaching math can be a struggle for both students and teachers. Students are too used to having things be as easy as punching buttons and receiving the answer. They have lost the simple facts, which hinders them from thinking abstractly later on. Technology is useful in math, but it should only be used as a tool, not a solution. Students are now becoming lost with what they are trying to learn, and frankly just give up. Now it is even harder to tell the difference between apathy and truly not understanding. Students should not use a calculator until they fully understand numbers, and number sense. Students need to realize that math is everywhere and it is not as simple as plug and chug.