You do the math ('cause your kids can't)

Here's a surprise: Stop teaching kids how to do basic arithmetic by hand, and they get worse at it. Let them use calculators for arithmetic from a young age and they get better at using calculators--but can't actually multiply or divide.

That's precisely what we did in the United States from 1990 onward. During the "back to basics" movement of the 1980s, students' performance in paper and pencil arithmetic improved. When schools increasingly started pushing the use of calculators for basic arithmetic in the '90s, things changed. Earlier improvements in students' ability to do arithmetic by hand stoped and then reversed direction.

As of 1999, American students are reasonably proficient at doing arithmetic on a calculator--which is to say they can type in the numbers and symbols they read on a test sheet, and then hit the [=] key. Not an especially profound display of mathematical prowess. When students are actually forced to think through arithmetic problems by hand, they most often fail miserably.

These are the conclusions reached by Brookings Institution researcher Tom Loveless in a newly released paper. Here's how Tom puts it:

Given an identical set of computation items, how do nine year olds perform when they are allowed to use a calculator compared to when a calculator is not allowed? Calculators change everything. For a large number of nine year olds, when calculators are available on computation items, they get correct answers. When calculators are not available, they get wrong answers. The smallest calculator advantage is on addition items, a skill nearing mastery. Students score 78.4% using only pencil and paper and 87.0% with calculators. The calculator advantage in other areas is huge. In subtraction, students scored 89.2% with calculators available and 59.7% without calculators. In multiplication, students scored 87.9 % with calculators and 42.5% without them. On division items, the scores were 77.1% with calculators, 48.3% without.

The conclusion is clear: allowing fourth graders to use calculators on items that are intended to assess computation skills will produce misleading results—misleading, that is, if one assumes that knowing how to compute means being able to make calculations without technological assistance. The fear of critics that calculators might serve as a crutch also appear well founded. Believing that a nine year old can compute when he or she cannot do so without a calculator is tantamount to believing that a nine year old can ride a bike when he or she cannot do so without training wheels.

Now aren't you glad we have state education monopolies under which 90 percent of students are subjected to the latest pedagogical fads? What's next, teaching kids to read by making them eat alphabet soup?

Posted by Andrew Coulson at April 21, 2004 12:08 AM | TrackBack