To be candid, students are just the way they are. When I was in school, I always had this mind of rejecting anything called calculations. This was because of the mindset I had developed from my friends and those close to me at home. They have been saying that mathematics is their generational problem, and so I decided to carry this same mindset and began to develop the spirit of rejecting mathematics.
In another way, just a few students in my class were so good when it comes to anything called calculations. They can solve questions within a few minutes, while I would be in a spot struggling. Things are so easy nowadays as we are not allowed to use calculators. I could still remember when I was writing my junior WAEC; it was a tug of war between me and calculating subjects. It was not easy, as I was struggling to make it.
This shows that I had been working so hard to bring myself into the realm of calculating subjects, but on the other hand, it was not bringing out the best of my knowledge to what I had thought it would.
There is something I believed so much when it comes to the aspect of students, and it has been the best observation so far. Students nowadays cannot do better where we have strict rules; they can work without fear, while some can only sneak to do what they were supposed to have done.
In the school where my husband worked previously, he told me that their junior high students were not allowed to use calculators. Even during their external exams, they must not use calculators to solve any forms of mathematics just because of the strict rules that have been set aside to make them perfect at calculating mathematical problems. Most of them, according to my husband, failed woefully as a result of following the strict rule that has been set aside for them.
In a real sense, civilization is coming to take over most of those things we were forced to do on a free will. Calculator is now coming to stay.
While in school, we were told that the only ones who are allowed to use calculators are the market women. Everyone believed that they were always calculating.
Come to think of it, the only way students can perform better in exams is when you give them that freedom to use the calculator, which has been abolished.
Whenever I’m told to stop using the calculator in the exam hall, I will not be able to perform to my satisfaction.
Back in the days when we were given assignments, we had to rack our brains just to carry out research on the work given. Most of the time, one has to run from one house to the other looking for text books. Reversal is now the case as AI has taken over everything in the world of today. Doing assignments is now so easy when compared to when we were still in school. It is now easy for the students to work freely.
To be sincere, it is not advisable for students to use the technological advancement (an Android phone) during exams. It can reduce their chance of knowing what they needed to know at that moment.