Joanne Jacobs has a bunch of testimonials from her readers as to just how worthless high-school, and even college diplomas have become. Particularly dismaying was the inability of young people to do computation without a calculator, or to recognize that an answer was absurd.

Many college students hang on to their calculators much as a young child hangs on to a blanket for security. In my first calculus test, when the professor wouldn’t let calculators used, five of 25 students walked out and 10 other students never came back to class. We ended up with nine students at the end of the semester. I have seen the same problem in chemistry, physics and other courses. When courses get hard, most students just drop instead of studying harder.