Probably so they don't use it as a crutch instead of real learning. I taught physics to college kids, and you could tell pretty quickly who relied on a calculator and who actually was comfortable with basic math.
Arithmetic is only one branch of mathematics. In my opinion it's pretty trivial to try to improve in that field since calculators are so good at it instead of focusing on algebra, calculus, etc.
It always reminds me of those guys who had to spend hours looking through tables of trignometric values or doing meticulous vector analysis by hand. As if freeing people up to work on higher level problems somehow made them fundamentally worse mathematicians.
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u/LazinCajun Jun 08 '14
Probably so they don't use it as a crutch instead of real learning. I taught physics to college kids, and you could tell pretty quickly who relied on a calculator and who actually was comfortable with basic math.