Is Calculator Bad for Grade school kids?

New researches made all over the world about the child education feels that calculators take away the ability of the child to think and calculate. The use of mental mathematics, the use abacaus is more permanent than the dependence on calculators.

Myself, I never allowed my children to use caculators while they were in school. I believe in using your mind and exercising it. Why do they have to do everything the lazy mans way. My kids thanked me later when they had to use it in life.

I think you made a great decision stay strong!

I think it is important that they learn how to solve the math problems without using the calculator otherwise they will always have to depend on it.

I don't agree with the use of calculators for school children but where my kids go to school, the school insisted that all kids have one - which they are also expected to use during exams. I think calculators make kids lazy and unable to add or subtract things in their heads. When I hand money over in a shop, because I do the calculation in my head, I know how much change to expect but my kids have become very reliant on calculators and can't do that.

We did not allow our children to use any device that would facilitate calculations if they were not able to do it with pencil and paper. My son is in 3rd grade and grades his own math.

Well, I dont have a child old enough to use a calculator. but i will most certinly not let my child use a calculator. unless it is to check his work. thats about it. because using a calculator, you dont work the problem out. if you never work the problem out how are you ever ganna learn how to do it. i think it just makes then get through with it quickly. but sometimes you cannot do that in life. or in school in a higher grade. so absolutly not with me..

I definitely agree with your decision. It's really important to let the child learn for himself and not rely to any calculator in terms of computation. I have a cousin who does rely on calculator and to tell you she's now in her 4th year high school and can't even multiply or divide a number on his own and we are blaming it to that machine.

I'm in the 9th grade.And agree that we shouldn't be allowed to use caculators in school.Because when it comes to exams and state wide testings were not allowed to use caculators and we end up failing the test.Then we fail the school year.But at the same point think the Teachers could help us more.For example my math teacher at the begging of the year had told us were not allowed to use 3.14 for Pie and taugh us another way of doing it then within the week before our state wide test she decides to change her ways and teach us Pie 3.14.Lucky for me I had already known it.But other kids had failed.And even though we weren't allowed to use a caculator.but on the other hand the Algebra teacher took use of her caculator and thats how she taugh us everything.Which didn't help us at all.If we wanted to learn that way she should have gave us our own.

Hello, agihcam, i don't use calculator until i entered high school but only for function such as "sina", "cos", “log","ln" etc,difficult problems you know can't be tackled on our own or at least it takes too much time. That's a wasting of time. But as to general mathematics problem, i don't. Simple multipy, division, plus, minus, no!I aslo memorize lots of formular to accelerate calculation, that's good.
In conclusion, my suggestion easy problems no, complicated one yes. You're kid's only Grade 3, absolutely not. Wait until he's in high school
Enjoy life

For grade 3 kids i never recommend to use a calculator.By profession I am a teacher so I know this that calculators are not a good option for doing the simple calculation at this very early stage of life.During this stage a child should be allowed to use his own brain as it is necassary to use ones mind for the mental development.Nowadays you can see that we are not able to recall the phone numbers of our friends and relatives because these numbers can be saved in our phone memory not in our memory and when we want to talk to them we simply search that number from our mobile phone memory because of which our memory power is declining gradully.Same happens with the use of calculators as we stop using our mind and gets fully dependent on them which is not a good sign for a childs mental growth.So as a teacher I recommend all parents and children not to use the calculators for the simple calculations.