page 6 - June 8, 1977 - North Shore News ra © Other professors, partic- ularly in science faculties, agree..One of them, John Renner of the University of Oklahoma, sums it all up this way: ‘‘The calculator will get you the right answer without STOP BOTH DIRECTIONS FORA SCHOOL BUS Your carpets will be cleaned by the latest DEEP STEAM method available today. Espec- ; ially effective on shag carpets. - | your understanding the pe f Many hands have been thrown up in despair basics of math. That’s my carpets @ chair during the nast vear or two ahout the illiteracy of fear—the kids ‘ will , ay MAR BARES CHIR past year we sw eum ea eres ~* there’s no need ito learn modern youth—widely attributed to the fact that because the little black box today’s young people represent history’s first will do it for them.’’ ee 2) fee, ~**mathematical television generation. The boob tube and Marshall MacLuhan are the villains most frequently named when droves of first-year university students turn out to need preliminary courses in remedial English. But that’s not the only thing the electronic wizardry of the past couple of decades has to answer for. To date illiteracy has usuaily been defined as a lack of reading and writing skills. But now a professor at Kansas State University. Dr. William Paske, has discov- ered a whole new breed of iiliterates—and once again ; communicate with them, it’s f Solid State technology col- the IBM that reads your ects a black eye. letter and dictates the reply. Pocket calculators. de- clares Dr. Paske, are *‘ruin- ing our kids’* by turning them into a generation of illiterates.”’ Having recently surveyed the effect of those handy little gadgets on 1.000 students. he presumably knows what he's talking about. HALF MADE ERRORS In the course of his study, es es ee WVEEIUE iasicd iS months, he found that nearly half the students who had used calculators for at least a year made errors in test calcula- tions when they had to use their own brains. | Of that group 11 per cent made at least two errors and seven per cent made three or more. ‘It's the seven per cent I'm worried about,’’ said Dr. eso elle Cll ls Paske. **They don’t show up in groups who have only used a calculator a few months or not at all. ‘‘When you become acc- ustoried to reaching for your calculator instead of thinking a problem through, you're bound to get a little rusty in math."" A similar comment might be made, incidentally, about the folk-heroes of TV who are accused of causing. the original form of illiteracy among the modern genera- ation. When you instinctively reach for your gun instead of thinking a problem through, you're bound to get a little rusty in the alternative arts of communication. West Vancouver council decided Monday it was time to find out what has happened to the neighbor- The good doctor is also worried about the blind faith that students place in calcu- lator answers. The feeling. he says, seems to be that if the calculator says it, then it must be right. s= Te ee tee ee the possibility that they might have miskeved the figures. It never occurs to them to run the _ figures through the calculator a second time. NO JUDGEMENT What’s even worse, it seems, is that calculator- addicted students habitually tend to lose touch with basic principles—thereby becom- ing incapable of evaluating answers. ‘*With a calculator,’’ says Dr. Paske, they just punch it out and if they get a ridiculous answer, it stands. ‘rapidly becoming DOING IT ALL FOR YOU Even with the arrival of mathematical however, we're still only scratching the surface. The transistorized black boxes, little ones and big onés, are already geared to creating -many other species of illit- eracy. Workers in modern, com- puter-equipped offices are clerical illiterates. If you attempt to There are black boxes that can create complete sym- phonies from a_ typewriter keyboard operated by a Grade 10 commerce student. And similar black boxes that can produce complex draw-- ings and designs with the same minimal amount of human input. Musical and artistic illiteracy are already within reach of anyone who can use two fingers. Or just Wee Romantic illiteracy— otherwise known as comput- er dating—has been with us for the better part of a decade. And it’s only a matter of time, no doubt, before the electronic engin- eers get around to generat- ing illiteracy in even more intimate areas. Like Ronald McDonald, ‘the jittie biack box ‘‘does it all for you.’’ And once we’ve reached the state of total illiteracy—free from all the agony of thinking—only one question will remain. Who will tell the little black box what to do for you? They have no basis for: § judgement and they don’t question a wrong answer. ‘‘The scary part of my findings, as far as I'm concerned, is that if we continue to encourage this sort of thing at the lower levels of our schools, we’re going to create a large mass of mathematical illiterates."’ Square pub project in the 1400 block Marine Drive. Back in December Fotiou hood pub proposed for edged out second-place ap- Ambleside. plicant Bill Clancey by only The pub application by 0.36 of a point on a 100-point cafe operator George Fotiou was approved by council last council scoring scale. Long- timc West Van resident December 13 and formally Clancey and his group had recommended to Victoria. earlier topped =a public About that time, however, preferertce poll among the provincial government eighborhood —houscholders imposed a freeze on further neighborhood pubs) pending an overall review of Hquor repulations. 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