I concur. Nothing I learnt in high school required anything more than pen and paper.But my EE degree? I would lie if I said a laptop with Matlab did not help me immensely to learn concepts
Your first introduction to computers was at college level? Cause in my university, if you did not came with preexisting knowledge of computers, you had zero chance studying CS or anything programming related.
The expectation was that you already know a lot about computer usage. And people who did not learned that before were treated like idiots.
You keep misinterpreting what I have said. Nowhere I have written that I didn't have access to a computer at home or that kids should not have a private computer. I really don't understand why you keep hammering this point.
In that setup, learning about computers basics is limited to people whose parents are proactive with it. A kid whose parents think no screens or no screens except for school is out of luck. A kid whose parents allow computer but don't teach anything useful on it is out of luck too.
Both elementary and high schools should and do teach those things. I don't know how they are supposed to teach that without school related access to computer.
And my math classes didn't require a calculator. Still would've been a disservice to ban them, because the point is to prepare you for real life where using a computer is the expectation.
Learning to do high school maths by hand and then doing it on a computer is trivial. Learning everything through a computer and then trying to do it by hand is incredibly hard.
Having your basic education be dependent on the most complicated tech in existence seems a bit too much for me. I don't think 5nm chips made in Taiwan are the best way to teach a kid what division is and who Napoleon was.
The expectation was that you already know a lot about computer usage. And people who did not learned that before were treated like idiots.