[woleium]

and that is a problem because?

i remember when maths teachers would scold me for not knowing my multiplication tables “are you going to carry a calculator around with you every day?” they would say when seeing me use one. Turns out i do.

[latexr]

That is such a tired, boring, selective memory meme. Did you not use a calculator later on in your education, say high school, for stuff like graphing and helping with equations? Do you not think educators in primary school teaching basic arithmetic knew about that?

All our maths education is based on lies which are progressively disclosed. You’re told we can’t go below zero, that numbers are integers, that you can’t take the square root of a negative number… And slowly are introduced to all those concepts building on what you learned before.

And yet this meme of “hur dur, mah teachers saids I’d haves no calculators on me but I use a phone all the time, epic fail” prevails instead of pondering for two seconds that maybe your teacher was giving a cookie-cutter argument that a literal child could comprehend but be unable to refute so they could continue with the damn lesson.

And as if people use calculators that often. They don’t. Yet being able to do some basic arithmetic is useful in such simple areas as shopping, to make more informed decisions in a world that is constantly trying to trick you.