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Comment by nitwit005

6 days ago

But, logically, you need to spend time thinking about numbers to be good reasoning about them, and the calculator is about reducing that time.

I feel there's a bit of a paradox, with many subjects, where we all know the basics are the absolute most important thing, but when we see the basics taught in the real world, it seems insultingly trivial.

I understand what you're saying, but I legitimately am unconvinced learning long division is necessary to learn by hand to master division. If anything, perhaps we should be asking children to derive arithmetic from use of a calculator.