In 1994, the College Board made substantial changes to the SAT’s math section to allow the use of calculators. The guidelines set by the NCTM were soon adopted into many local and state curricula. But the most consequential move came three years later from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), which advocated for the use of calculators from kindergarten through grade 12. In 1986, Connecticut became the first state to mandate the use of calculators on state tests, signaling the beginning of a calculator-dependent generation.

Opponents worried that students would become over-dependent on calculators, losing the ability to do simple arithmetic operations and exercise a solid sense of numbers. Proponents of the calculator argued that machines could help students make sense of abstract mathematical notations through real-life problems, making math fun and interesting. Debates over the role of calculators in the classroom quickly emerged, and arguments for and against their use have hardly changed since then. Four-function calculators-those that only perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division-gradually entered the classrooms, dividing educators and parents alike. Today, prices for graphing calculators hover around $80.Īmerica’s Epidemic of Unkindness Annie Lowreyīy the mid 1970s, 11 percent of Americans owned a calculator. (Kilby later won the Nobel Prize in physics.) A decade later, calculators would no longer be stored in gigantic cabinets with a price tag of over $700,000 they would substantially diminish in size and gradually become more affordable. Although the abacus has been in use since the time of the Sumerians and Ancient Egyptians, it wasn’t until 1958 when the Texas Instrument engineer Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit, which paved the way for the cheap and compact computer chips used in most electronic devices today. The debate over the use of calculators in math classrooms has ensued for more than four decades-nearly as long as the contemporary calculator has been around. This isn’t an unusual predicament: According to a 2010 national survey by the Mathematical Association of America, nearly half of Calculus 1 college instructors prohibit students from using graphing calculators on exams. When I took my freshman math courses at McGill University in Montreal last school year, I had to revert back to pencil and paper, clumsily lining up columns to do addition and long-multiplication problems at my professor’s request. Still, college professors remain divided on the use of calculators in their classes. Calculators are so commonplace in modern American education that a TI-84 or -89 can be found stashed away in many homes, mementos from taking the SAT or computing integrals on the Advanced Placement calculus exam. Step inside any high-school math class in the United States, and chances are you’ll find students staring down at their Texas Instrument calculators, nimbly typing commands into those $100 pocket computers.

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