Another brilliant idea

[Skybird]

I know that there are teachers advocating that handwriting should be skipped from school lessons, since everybody is typing on a keyboard. Some even are insane enough not wanting to teach maths anymore, but the handling of an electronic calculator only.

GPS and computer assistances are all nice and well, for everyday duties an routines, I'm all for it. But you should nevertheless fulfill two conditions, always:

You should be qualified to use the manual procedure, the analogue mechanical device nevertheless, you should have learned it as the fundament on which digital/electronic modern toys base on, and you should be able to use it in case of emergency.

You should have analogue/non-electronic backups. Stored deep in a box, maybe, but it should be there in case you depend on needing to find it.

If needing to plan for an expedition and in isolated grounds, if needed to chose, I would always prefer map, compass and sextant over a tablet with GPS or something like that. ALWAYS. I learned all about compass navigation just for curiosity, and later I really could made good use of it, in North Africa especially. For pure curiosity, and although I never needed it, I learned how to use a sextant. If an empty nut like me could learn that for curiosity, then everybody can. Not to mention handwriting and head-calculating basic maths.

I would not dare to join a yacht heading for the blue ocean that only has the latest GPS and computers with three levels of redundancy aboard, but no printed maps, magnetic compass and sextant. I could win a free world journey with it, and still would refuse to accept it.