The Calculator Mistake I’ll Never Make Again—And What It Says About AI Today

Four ways to build mental muscle with AI.

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As a middle school math teacher, I made a mistake I still regret.

For one long school year, I was locked in a battle with thirty eleven-year-olds over memorizing multiplication tables. They met my insistence with a relentless “But in the real world, we’ll just use a calculator!”

I held the line until I heard the real-world progress gospel of my fellow teachers. I overheard colleagues preaching the gospel of "real-world relevance." The thought of clinging to outdated rote memorization methods suddenly felt like stubbornness. And at the time, I was too drained from parent conversations, administrative tasks, and emotional labor to dive into the cognitive science behind learning.

So the next school year, I gave in. I handed out the calculators, telling myself I was being a modern, progressive educator.

I was wrong.

That simple calculator has evolved. The AI we use today is a calculator for nearly everything—our writing, our reasoning, our creativity. And just like my students, we are tempted to offload the mental heavy lifting. I see now that my mistake was about endorsing a shortcut that bypassed the messy, effortful process where real learning happens.

This time, the stakes are infinitely higher than multiplication tables. Cognitive offloading, which is an expert term for outsourcing our thinking, slowly erodes our capacity for deep understanding, error detection, and true insight. The effortless convenience of these tools can leave our knowledge brittle, shallow, and dangerously incomplete.

I’m not suggesting we abandon these amazing tools. But understanding the trade-offs can help you maintain cognitive strength and prevent convenience from becoming a crutch. Here’s how.

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Why Rote Learning Still Matters (and What Your Brain Actually Needs)

Your brain runs on two systems:

• Declarative memory is conscious recall ("Vienna is Austria’s capital").

• Procedural memory is unconscious mastery (riding a bike, typing without looking).

True mastery happens when declarative knowledge turns into intuitive, procedural schemata—automatic mental shortcuts that trigger instant recognition and creative insight. Cognitive scientist Barbara Oakley emphasizes that offloading tasks, like using calculators excessively, disrupts this critical transition.

Oakley shares the example of a nurse who immediately notices a dangerously misplaced decimal in a dosage—not because he's exceptional at math, but because he's internalized number sense. Compare this with a nurse overly reliant on calculators; the numbers might "look right," yet without intuition, he won’t sense the error.

This internal system thrives on prediction errors—your brain’s surprise signals when reality doesn't match expectations, releasing dopamine that cements learning. Without internalized knowledge, you lose prediction, lose error detection, and ultimately, lose learning.

What Happens When You Outsource Thinking to AI

If calculators outsource arithmetic, AI outsources reasoning itself. Tools like ChatGPT produce polished essays effortlessly, but research shows you retain little. Oakley warns of "metacognitive laziness"—an illusion of understanding from AI-generated fluency.

Just because an AI can explain quantum mechanics beautifully doesn't mean you've grasped it. Without the necessary mental frameworks, your knowledge remains superficial.

4 Ways to Build Mental Muscle With AI

✅ 1. Embrace the Struggle: Grapple First, AI Second.
Struggling to recall information isn't punishment—it builds robust neural pathways. A phenomenon called "desirable difficulty." Today's effort becomes tomorrow’s expertise.

✅ 2. Memorize What Matters: The Fundamentals are Your Foundation.
Don't dismiss memorization as outdated. Internalized fundamentals enable creativity and insight. Cognitive researcher David Rumelhart highlighted that deep understanding requires internalized patterns, not endless lookups. (Here is my guide on building your memory system).

✅ 3. Make AI Your Intern, Not Your Boss.
Treat AI as your thought partner, not a substitute. Draft your ideas first, then refine them with AI. This ensures genuine understanding and retention. (I’ve written about how to do this effectively in more depth here).

✅ 4. Distinguish Access from Ability.
Access to information isn’t the same as knowledge. True internalization allows you to predict, spot errors, and adapt flexibly. Know what's stored in your mind, not just in your browser bookmarks.

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Smart Minds Need Strong Muscles

Thinking back to that classroom, I realize my mistake wasn't just handing out calculators. It was endorsing a shortcut that bypassed the messy, effortful process where real learning happens. My students missed the chance to build a deeper number sense because I let them skip the work that builds it.

Today’s tools are more powerful. The AI we use today is a calculator for our writing, our reasoning, our creativity. It offers to take on any task that requires "desirable difficulty," the very struggle that builds robust neural pathways. It's tempting to accept that offer, to trade the strain of thinking for the fluency of an AI-generated answer.

But that trade-off comes at a high cost. It keeps our knowledge declarative—facts we can look up—and prevents it from becoming procedural—the intuitive schemata that signal true mastery. Without internalized knowledge, our ability to predict, to spot subtle errors, and to generate genuine insight begins to weaken.

Our brains are not hard drives meant for storage; they are prediction engines that thrive on internalized patterns. The powerful tools we have are incredible extensions of our minds, but they cannot replace the foundation. They are co-pilots for a skilled operator, not an autopilot for an empty cockpit.

Years ago, I chose convenience for my students over the cognitive work that builds lasting strength. It's a choice and a mistake I still think about. Now, the choice is yours, and the stakes are higher. The question isn't just what tools you will use, but what knowledge you will choose to internalize.

So, ask yourself: What knowledge is worth the work? And what kind of mind do you want to build?

Sources

Barr, N., Pennycook, G., Stolz, J. A. and Fugelsang, J.A. (2015). The brain in your pocket: Evidence that smartphones are used to supplant thinking, Computers in Human Behavior, 48, pp. 473-480. 10.1016/j.chb.2015.02.029

Christodoulou, D. (2014). Seven Myths About Education. Routledge.

Oakley, B., Johnston, M., Chen, K.-Z., Jung, E., & Sejnowski, T. (2025). "The Memory Paradox: Why Our Brains Need Knowledge in an Age of AI." In The Artificial Intelligence Revolution: Challenges and Opportunities (Springer Nature, forthcoming).