Possible death of calculators in education?

[c785]

At school, we got our calculators handed out (everyone had the same basic TI calculator, I think it was the TI-30), and that was the only one allowed in exams.

Then, at university, they didn't allow the use of calculators at all in most exams. Whenever they did, a calculator wouldn't have been much help anyway.

I got my HP48G for getting work done, not for exams. I use computers for most stuff now, but there's still the odd situation when the 48G is incredibly useful (as is my new toy, the WP-34s). My smartphone also has droid48 and free42 on it, but I don't use any of those very often. It's just not the same thing. If I hadn't already got my calculators, I'd probably get a 50G today.

As a kid, I was told that only those deserve to have a calculator who can actually calculate things without one. The calculator only helps you do it faster, but it's no use if you have no idea what it actually computes and how.

Apparently, things have changed. Graphing calculators are very common even in school, where (IMHO) they simply don't belong (except for the occasional maths nerd who actually knows what a slide rule is).