For each of the issues to be discussed at CSCL 1999, we have primed the discussion with one or two representative quotes from the "critical literature" (see the bibliography page on this site). We invite you to send in your response to this issue. You need not, of course, respond directly to the particular quotes that we have chosen if there are other issues that you feel are more important or interesting; and you are welcome to send something in even if you don't necessarily plan to attend the CSCL conference. We will act as moderators for the discussion and update this site regularly prior to the conference.
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3. That computers represent a misappropriation of financial and intellectual resources in education, and that their cost is disproportionately high in view of whatever benefits they might bring. |
"Whatever the sources of curricular indecision and lethargy may be, the conservatism of American educators has been powerfully supplemented by a new factor: fiscal limitations. When computers first began to penetrate the classroom, the assumption was that an Apple II or an IBM PC, plus some basic software and a low-cost dot matrix printer, represented a long-term capital investment. But machines like the aging Apple II, which still makes up 50 percent of the installed base of school computers, are moving steadily toward obsolescence, despite the continued production of software for them.
Teachers may be resourceful in making the most of the old machines, but both they and their students are constantly made aware that there is later and better merchandise on the market. Many of the kids are aware of that fact from the games they use at home or at the video arcade. And the latest, most eye-popping programs that have entered the educational market require hard disks and much memory, as well as CD-ROM drives. Though the cost of everything electronic continues to decline, the purchase of add-ons as costly as CD-ROM players and sound cards in any great quantity is no easy expenditure for financially strapped school systems. Even when there are ways of networking such facilities, the installation and maintenance of networks can be a heavy expense--especially in schools where the wear and tear on fragile equipment can take a fierce toll. All the money has to come from other parts of the curriculum. As long as 'edutainment', as the industry calls its latest melange of multimedia tricks, requires as much computer power as it does, it will lie beyond the reach of many schools....
[E]ven if the will and the skill were there to use the machines well, in many school districts the funds educators divert to computers will have to come out of urgently necessary programs like vaccinations or school lunches or campus security. There are schools where controlling the handguns on campus counts for more than teaching computer literacy. We are reminded that our nation's schools are woven into a dense political and sociological fabric that has everything to do with morale, teachability, opportunity, safety, and survival."
-- from Theodore Roszak, The Cult of Information, xxxvi-xxxviii
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I'd like to comment on the "NetDay" phenomenon. This was dreamed up a couple of years ago by... and here there seem to be several Silicon Valley hands raised to take "credit" for it. But the idea was and is to wire school classrooms for access to the Internet- not to provide the computers, nor the upgrades (hardware and software), nor the maintenance, nor the training of teachers.
At the same time that the high tech cheerleaders were whipping up a frenzy about how all we employees of high- tech companies (my day job) should volunteer to help wire these classrooms, there was an article in the San Jose Mercury News about the lamentable state of the Los Altos school system's physical plant. Roofs were leaking, etc. etc.
Los Altos isn't exactly a poor town, so the story set me wondering about what the physical plant of schools in really poor areas must be like.
I don't think that the NetDay promoters really stopped for even an instant to consider priorities, and the effect of imposing a continuing stream of costs on the school districts. Nor are they even close to being experts on education. The publicity attendant on NetDay certainly added its bit to the frenzy of parents, who want to be assured that their kids will be "computer literate," whatever that means.
One of the most influential high-tech gurus in the Bay Area was quoted as marveling at how the netification of schools could enable, for example, students in the schools of Palo Alto to communicate with students in East Palo Alto. I found this weird, to say the least!