“this one has the intention of enlisting mindless allegiance and acquiescence. People who have no clear idea of what they mean by information, or why they should want so much of it, are nonetheless prepared to believe that we live in an Information Age, which makes every computer around us what the relics of the True Cross were in the Age of Faith: emblems of salvation.” 4 To this, I would add the sage observation of Alan Kay of Apple Computer. Kay is widely associated with the invention of the personal computer, and certainly has aninterest in the use of computers in schools. Nonetheless, he has repeatedly said that any problems the schools cannot solve without computers, they cannot solve with them. What are some of those problems? There is, for example, the traditional task of teaching children how to behave in groups. You cannot have a democratic—indeed, civilized—community life unless people have learned how to participate in a disciplined way as part of a group. One might even say that schools have never been essentially about individualized learning. It is true, of course, that groups do not learn; individuals do. But the idea of a school is that individuals must learn in a setting in which individual needs are subordinated to group interests. Unlike other media of mass communication, which celebrate individual response and are experienced in private, the classroom is intended to tame the ego, to connect the individual with others, to demonstrate the value and necessity of group cohesion. At present, most scenarios describing the uses of computers have children solving problems alone. Little Eva, Young John, and the others are doing just that, and, in fact, they do not need the presence of other children. The presence of others may, indeed, be an annoyance. (Not all computer visionaries, I must say, take lightly the importance of a child’s learning to subordinate the self. Seymour Papert’s
The Children’s Machine
is an imaginative example of how computers have been used to promote social cohesion, although, as I have had occasion to say to him, the same effects can be achieved without computers. Naturally, he disagrees.)
Nonetheless, like the printing press before it, the computer has a powerful bias toward amplifying personal autonomy and individual problem-solving. That is why, Papert to the contrary, most of the examples we are given picture children working alone. That is also why educators must guardagainst computer technology’s undermining some of the important reasons for having the young assemble in school, where social cohesion and responsibility are of preeminent importance.
Although Ravitch is not exactly against what she calls “state run schools,” she imagines them as something of a relic of a pre-technological age. She believes that the new technologies will offer all children equal access to information. Conjuring up a hypothetical Little Mary who is presumably from a poorer home than Little Eva, Ravitch imagines that Mary will have the same opportunities as Eva “to learn any subject, and to learn it from the same master teachers as children in the richest neighborhood.” 5 For all its liberalizing spirit, this scenario contains some omissions that need to be kept in mind. One is that though new technologies may be a solution to the learning of “subjects,” they work against the learning of what are called “social values,” including an understanding of democratic processes. If one reads the first chapter of Robert Fulghum’s
All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
, one will find an elegant summary of a few things Ravitch’s scenario has left out. They include learning the following lessons: share everything, play fair, don’t hit people, put things back where you found them, clean up your own mess, wash your hands before you eat, and, of course, flush. 6 The only thing wrong with Fulghum’s idea is that no one actually has learned all these things at
The Children’s Machine
is an imaginative example of how computers have been used to promote social cohesion, although, as I have had occasion to say to him, the same effects can be achieved without computers. Naturally, he disagrees.)
Nonetheless, like the printing press before it, the computer has a powerful bias toward amplifying personal autonomy and individual problem-solving. That is why, Papert to the contrary, most of the examples we are given picture children working alone. That is also why educators must guardagainst computer technology’s undermining some of the important reasons for having the young assemble in school, where social cohesion and responsibility are of preeminent importance.
Although Ravitch is not exactly against what she calls “state run schools,” she imagines them as something of a relic of a pre-technological age. She believes that the new technologies will offer all children equal access to information. Conjuring up a hypothetical Little Mary who is presumably from a poorer home than Little Eva, Ravitch imagines that Mary will have the same opportunities as Eva “to learn any subject, and to learn it from the same master teachers as children in the richest neighborhood.” 5 For all its liberalizing spirit, this scenario contains some omissions that need to be kept in mind. One is that though new technologies may be a solution to the learning of “subjects,” they work against the learning of what are called “social values,” including an understanding of democratic processes. If one reads the first chapter of Robert Fulghum’s
All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
, one will find an elegant summary of a few things Ravitch’s scenario has left out. They include learning the following lessons: share everything, play fair, don’t hit people, put things back where you found them, clean up your own mess, wash your hands before you eat, and, of course, flush. 6 The only thing wrong with Fulghum’s idea is that no one actually has learned all these things at
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