CALCULATERS IN THE CLASSROOM

Electronic pocket calculators until recently were expensive novelties, used chiefly by mathematicians, statisticians and scientists. But production has increased, prices are plummeting, and the rush is on. Simple calculators now cost less than $20, and some 12 million of the electronic devices were sold in 1974. Housewives are now using them to balance family checkbooks, and calculators have even begun to invade the classroom. In fact, the growing popularity of the calculators among students and teachers--even in the primary grades--adds up to one of the hottest fads in education.

So far, most of the calculators used in the classroom are brought from home. In Seattle high school calculus classes, for example, many students use their own "slide rule" calculators (which include trigonometric and exponential functions), just as they would have used their own traditional slide rules a few years ago. A few school systems, however, have begun to supply and use calculators in an organized way. Three junior highs and one elementary school in Cupertino, Calif., have been using 15 calculators as standard equipment in math classes since September. In Math Teacher Barbara Good-son's classes, pupils share the devices on regular assignments during one or two periods a week. Says Goodson: "Kids who weren't all that eager to come to math class now ask, 'Is this the computer day?' "

Wrong Answers. The Cupertino program is part of an experiment designed by Educational Consultant Wallace Judd, which involves 1,400 students in 14 junior highs in four cities from Harrisburg, Pa., to San Francisco. Judd stresses that students in the program must be able to formulate a problem before they go to work on a calculator. "A calculator won't give you a wrong answer to a computation," says Judd, but it will give you a wrong answer if the problem is set up incorrectly.

In Chicago, students have been using calculators since September at John F. Kennedy High School, which supplies one machine for every two or three students in math classes. In Washington, the school system spent $5,000 to buy "electronic slide rule" calculators for all the city secondary schools. In Denver, the school system has bought a few dozen calculators, primarily for use in remedial math and consumer classes, in which percentages are frequently used.

The introduction of classroom calculators has not been met with universal joy hi academe. There is the worry that calculators--like the new math--could create more problems than they solve. Some teachers--usually those who have not used them--fear that calculators may produce a generation of mathematical illiterates who would be lost without their machines. John Kounjain, mathematics director for the Watertown, Mass., public schools, calls the use of calculators "kind of ridiculous. You can't give the students a $19 calculator and then forget about teaching them the four basic functions." William Geo, a Denver math supervisor, says he gets an adverse reaction from some older teachers "who think that kids should be 100% independent." Others are concerned that students who can afford electronic brains will have an unfair advantage over those who cannot, although most school systems have moved quickly to prohibit their use on tests.

Generally, however, administrators praise the calculator. "I think it is an excellent teaching tool," says John Slezak, director of instructional services in San Rafael, Calif. In Philadelphia, Alexander Tobin, director of the city's math programs, follows the policy of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics: "We recognize calculators as valuable aids in reinforcement of math teaching, but not as substitutes."

One of the biggest problems so far is not how to insert calculators into the curriculum but how to keep them in the classroom. Cupertino mounts some of its machines on plywood boards to make it harder to take them home. San Rafael Calculator Salesman Louis Milani goes so far as to recommend that schools not buy pocket calculators, because "they get ripped off too easily."

Still, the widespread use of calculators in the classroom seems inevitable. Prices of the simpler machines are expected to drop to around $10 early in 1975, and there is talk about $5 calculators by the end of the year. By that time, they may well take their place with notebooks and pencils as standard school supplies.

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