By the time I was in elementary school calculators were ubiquitous enough that it was definitely considered cheating to use one. By the time I got into the higher maths, they were permitted or required. But now they're letting them be used at every level, even in elementary schools. I put it in the "we don't teach cursive anymore" category.
They've convinced themselves that doing anything by rote is just a procedural and unnecessary thing, when in reality the supposedly pointless rote works to build cognitive pathways in the brain.