The British government has long been considering the effects of letting students use calculators in the classroom. Some ministers believe calculators should be completely banned from use in primary schools. In debates prior to the general election, the present Secretary of State for Education said he intended to ban calculators for children under eight years of age because there was evidence of a link
between the use of calculators and poor mental arithmetic skills among young pupils. Other ministers have made public their views on the matter along similar lines, claiming that the use of calculators should be strongly discouraged, not only for the under-eights, but for all pupils up to eleven. Even in secondary schools, some say, their use should be reviewed. The education authorities think firmly that mental calculation must be given a central place in the teaching of mathematics and should always be used as the first resort method of calculation.

Angry mathematicians say there is no research evidence to prove that the nation’s poor performance in maths is due to the use of calculators in schools. They also mention an official report which indicates that these views are unnecessarily extreme because “the evidence indicates that the use of calculators is generally infrequent and there are few schools in which pupils have ready and regular access to calculators”. “Calculators should not be blamed for what is a more complex problem in teaching mathematics”, the report concludes. But there is no general agreement on the report’s conclusion. Professors at the Institute of Economic and Social Research were not convinced by the report. In their opinion, it is very important to get the basic skills of calculation firmly implanted and they think that this cannot be done if children are using calculators all the time. Besides, some teachers argue that children like calculators and therefore using them makes students more motivated. Or as one teacher puts it: “The use of calculators shows that the maths at school is like the maths people do outside”.

PART ONE: READING COMPREHENSION

1. Answer the following questions without copying from the text.

a) Why have the Education authorities in Britain suggested the need to ban calculators in some lassrooms?

b) How would you summarize the views of teachers in favour of the use of calculators in class?

c) What are the main conclusions of the official report mentioned in the text?

  PART TWO: WRITING
Choose ONE. Write about either 1 or 2.

Option A: Write a letter to The Independent, a British newspaper, giving your views for or against the use of calculators in class, mentioning your own experiences as a student of Mathematics in a secondary school. Do not use your real name.

Option B: Before going into university, you are asked to write a message addressed to teachers and students which will be hung on the walls of your old school on this topic: “My school education and the real world: a personal view”. Write it down without using your real name.

3. Vocabulary

Explain next words in English, write the phonetics and also an example: to ban, research, to claim, to argue.