The upcoming ban on the use of calculators in most maths exams for 11-year-olds in UK schools reminds me of a persistent concern in education: when do the tools we use to learn become crutches we can’t do without?
When I was in school, we had to analyse the roots of novel words to make an educated guess about their meaning. We got it right sometimes, and that was such a thrill. Other times we didn’t.
Now, we have the internet and there is no need to analyse the roots when the meaning is so easily searchable. So, do we ban Google in the classroom? In the same vein, word processing software automatically provides grammar and spell checks – do we ban them too? The list of such tools just goes on.
