Computers in Schools, A Travesty of Sorts

Just glanced through an article listed on my new favorite resource, "Art & Letters Daily," that questions the impact of the "computer in the classroom" movement. Thank-you Amy Kress for the site.

This article, entitled The Computer Delusion, highlights the overwhelming assumption that putting computers in classrooms enriches a child's learning experience, even at the expense of arts and music programs. Instead of completely rejecting computer proliferation, the article questions whether the old programs provided valuable insights that children are now missing. We so quickly assume that something like a computer must be good, even essential, for kids' learning, but I wonder how much computers stimulate mental development. Knowledge is one thing, but understanding is another. We can know lots of things, and know about lots of things, but if we don't know how to use that knowledge in a beneficial, loving way, then we've become little more than a brood of human computers. My favorite public policy professor got this thesis more than most: after extensive involvement reforming educational policy in Chicago and coastal NC, she told our class one day that research has shown that viewing powerpoint presentations stimulates brain activity less than staring at a blank wall. Kind of makes you think twice, huh?

In developing my understanding of the computer movement, I have ascertained that computers are not necessarily good or bad, its all a matter of how we choose to use them, and how often. If we use them to supplant real, hands-on, touch and feel experience, then we're losing part of what it means to be human. Transferring all of our interactions to digital experience shortcuts the necessary give and take of tangible relationships-they take work and time, and sometimes they involve considerable hardship. If we screw something up in real-time hands-on experience, we can't simply throw it away and start over; instead action involves tangible consequence. Internet and computer regulated activity often mitigates the consequence involved in actions, thus short-circuiting the fact that real consequences exist-kids can blow people up, burn down cities, make relationships and families (ala Sims) electronically without realizing the extensive consequences that such actions hold in real life. We can't rely on computers to do things we should know how to do ourselves, and we can't allow them to do the activities we should be learning to do with our hands, eyes, and ears. Computers can and should only take us so far. With that said, this article is a worthy read; i'm off to do something that doesn't involved a computer and encourage you to do the same...

http://www.tnellen.com/ted/tc/computer.htm