Gene Weingarten has a great piece on technology and what it does to our intelligence. I’ve often been suprised that so many of my students have trouble doing math in their heads, and I attribute it to reliance on calculators. We don’t need to be good at math because we have those little calculators.

Weingarten humorously suggests that many Americans can’t spell well because they don’t need to. They have spell checkers.

So is technology making us dumber, or are we just learning different things? Have I become the old curmudgeon who thinks everyone was smarter when he was young, or are kids not learning certain basic skills as well? I’m honestly not sure.