Mr. or Ms. Old Pen and Paper is an instructor that is completely dependent on pen and paper to explain accounting concepts.
Note, we have nothing against Mr. Old Pen and Paper, we have learned much from Mr. Old Pen and Paper instructors, and have a bit of Mr. Old Pen and Paper tendencies and characteristics ourselves. Although we are working on improving the pen and paper dependency, the old component of Old Pen and Paper is likely only to get worse as time passes, but that is OK. It is what it is. Anyways. . .
Teaching accounting using a pen and paper does have some valid advantages over using a magical database program because it allows us to see connections between data more clearly than a magical database problem, but the connections take a long to formulate and are not as clear as an electronic spreadsheet program like Excel.
One problem with the use of a pen and paper to teach is that a comprehensive problem can take entire day instead of an hour with Excel.
We also must erase any errors, and when we make mistakes, we will need to reformate our entire problem for every area the error effects. We will also need to think about how to format the problem on a piece of paper. Mr. Old Pen and Paper has worked problems with pen and paper so long that he does it perfectly, with no mistakes, and no need to erase. However, when learning accounting we do a lot of erasing and tinkering with the data. Excel is much better to test data scientifically because we can test many different assumptions much more quickly and transparently.
Teaching and learning with a pen and paper also involve handwriting issues. In other words, we need to be able to read the handwriting of our instructor and ourselves. Many Old Pen and Paper instructors are very good a writing legibly, and the skill of handwriting was highly valued in the field of accounting for a long time, but it is much less appreciated now because we will not be presenting information in a handwritten format.
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