If there are people out there teaching calculator math to first graders there ought to be data on how that is working out. But it shouldn’t be a surprise that an unlearned skill remains unlearned.

The question is whether a learned skill is “much worse” in the presence of a tool. You seem to be agreeing that it isn’t (or at least doesn’t have to be), but that danger lies in just never learning the skill.

> but that danger lies in just never learning the skill

Yes, which is what I think AI contributes to

Especially with reckless ideas like "vibe coding" going around

We don't really see that with calculators, though. We see that people who already don't do mental math are enabled to do more math. Those of us who can do mental math can benefit from calculators but don't lose the skill we've learned. As far as I know (which could easily be out of date), arithmetic is still taught sans calculators in most places.

"Vibe coding" is primarily being done by people who already weren't learning to program. If programming was taught as ubiquitously and early as arithmetic, they either wouldn't be vibe coding or they were never going to program in the first place because for whatever reason they were unable or unwilling to develop the skill. So you could see this as a loss of potential, but I suspect it is far more of a democratization of programming.

If we're looking at parallels, we should be looking at WYSIWYG webpage creation tools rather than calculators. Did that destroy knowledge of HTML and CSS?

Imagine if kids were not taught 1+1=2, but given calculators and shown how to use one. Could anyone do mental math with that education?

Now apply that to LLM used to writing, research, reading comprehension, summarizing, debating, and so on, in the same school system

That's the point of learning arithmetic first without calculators.