You won’t always have access to books from a printing press, youngster, so you must derive all knowledge from first principles!
And ftr, there’s always been a good reason to learn things from first principles, and for teachers to encourage students to practice learning from first principles. You end up with a deeper understanding about it, can answer more questions on your own, and can ask better questions and get faster answers, if you understand the layers beneath your question.
That’s still no excuse for teachers being dishonest about the reason though. I don’t believe that teachers in the 70’s and 80’s thought calculators were just gonna go away.
for us oldbies, who went to school before the internet was popular, it used to be “You won’t have a calculator with you everywhere you go!”
You won’t always have access to books from a printing press, youngster, so you must derive all knowledge from first principles!
And ftr, there’s always been a good reason to learn things from first principles, and for teachers to encourage students to practice learning from first principles. You end up with a deeper understanding about it, can answer more questions on your own, and can ask better questions and get faster answers, if you understand the layers beneath your question.
That’s still no excuse for teachers being dishonest about the reason though. I don’t believe that teachers in the 70’s and 80’s thought calculators were just gonna go away.