BOOK NOTES by Joan Ruddiman
Clifford Stoll is a self-professed “propeller-head.” He has been intimately connected to computers since the 1960s.
An astronomer by training and profession, he commands banks of computers. He made his name as an author in the mid-1980s with “Cuckoo’s Egg,” a riveting account of his experiences tracking an international computer hacker. After decades of being connected, Stoll pushed back from his computer to take a hard look at reality in “Silicon Snake Oil,” which, like his latest book, seems to promote an anti-computer message.
“High-Tech Heretic: Why Computers Don’t Belong in the Classroom and Other Reflections by a Computer Contrarian” offers a much-needed second opinion to the widespread “culture that enshrines computers,” as Stoll puts it. He sees his role “as injecting — perhaps without success — a few notes of skepticism into the utopian dreams of digital wonderland. For I believe that techies have a responsibility to challenge hyperbole, false promises, and gross exaggerations.”
Stoll, as a professor and computer expert, but most of all, as a parent, is strident in tone. After his opening salvo and the first few chapters, his message becomes redundant. However, this is a book every parent should read. Why parents? Because you are the force behind policy making. Stoll cites specific cases, reflective of our society’s “culture of computers,” where policy makers — federal, state and local governments — throw money at computer technology to “enhance education” because this is what looks good to parents.
Stoll defines computer literacy as the ability to use a word processor, manipulate a spreadsheet, know what a database does, be able to use e-mail, and know how to browse the World Wide Web. None of this, he contends, “is challenging stuff.” What is necessary is learning how to manipulate this tool. That’s all a computer is, a sophisticated tool. To “teach” computers is looking at the tool as an end in itself. What students don’t know, and too often are not taught, is how to apply these basic computer skills to higher critical thinking. The Web is a great resource, but only if one knows what they are reading — indeed IF they read. Too often, research on the Internet means finding the site.
Stoll documents (any teacher can see him and raise him 20) students who present “facts” they found in research that are worthless. As Stoll points out, textbooks are reviewed for content. Not so with Web sites. Anyone can put anything out there, and they do. Students need a lot of support and guidance in how to read and interpret Internet information. “Data is not information,” Stoll points out. It must be interpreted. Too often, the computer — the medium — really is the message.
Stoll also debunks the myth that computers enhance learning. First, the idea of “virtual” anything is not hands-on manipulation, nor is it in real time. A computer-simulated lab is just that, a simulation. It may enhance details of actual lab experience, but it is not a substitute. Moreover, “instant gratification encourages intellectual passivity,” Stoll notes. Thinking, reflecting, analyzing take time, not what virtual images encourage students to do.
What about little kids on computers? Stoll’s dismay screams from these pages. “Paintbox” software does little more than allow a kid to drag a mouse across the pad. Mixing colors, watching original artwork emerge from paintbrushes and fingers on paper are not what kids experience in “virtual art.” From developmental psychology we know that kids learn from “playing” with sand, with blocks, with paints. Yet just as science labs are being converted to computer labs, the sandbox and paint table are being moved out of preschools to make room for computers. Great. Let kids sit passively in front of a screen, clicking a program through to its predictable end, then decry their poorly developed learning skills.
Stoll echoes the concerns of other educators and computer “techies.” Last year, Jane Healy, an educational psychologist, reading and learning specialist, wrote “Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children’s Minds — for Better and Worse.” She advocates, supported by four decades in the classroom as well as all her academic credentials, little to no computer use for children under 7. Healy warns of “too much screen time and too little talk time,” which is Stoll’s point made in “Silicon Snake Oil.” Kids benefit a whole lot more from going to the zoo than they do with “exploring” a virtual zoo on their computer screen.
Some of his harshest criticism is directed to the now ubiquitous PowerPoint presentations. The Wall Street Journal recently ran a front-page article on the Pentagon’s “war on electronic slide shows that make briefings a pain.” PowerPoint is literally the “bells and whistles” (and the zooming car, the clacking typewriter) too many of us have suffered through in darkened auditoriums. The message from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was “we don’t need Venetian-blind effects or fancy backdrops … just the information.” PowerPoint has the capacity to convey information very effectively, if the user realizes that, again, the program is not an end in itself but a means to an end.
Tackling another sensitive issue, Stoll makes a very valid point that is often overlooked by policy makers — obsolescence. From the wiring, the hardware, the software and programming, computer systems in fewer than five years are outdated. Look in the basement or closets in any school and you’ll find hardware that is no longer useful to anyone. Like textbooks that are outdated, what school or non-profit agency would accept computer equipment that has been discarded precisely because it is worthless?
Stoll advocates spending money on teachers, text materials, real librarians who know books and how to research rather than tech-savvy “media specialists.” His bottom line is a truth we all need to face. Computers, like cars, are wonderful tools; they get us where we need to go. But the government did not feel compelled a half-century ago to put a car into every household and people still rose up the economic ladder. Individuals worked towards the goal and eventually everyone had a car.
Computer literacy is not what gets kids into college and moves them up the economic ladder. Reading, writing and critical thinking — true literacy — is still the ticket to ride. It is worth reading “High Tech Heretic” to hear the other side of the story, including the amount of hidden expenses a computer infrastructure demands to be maintained. Parents need to know what policy makers are investing in, and why.
Buy computers AND science labs, sandboxes, real paints and books — lots and lots of real books. If the money runs out, cut the computer budget.
Joan Ruddiman is a teacher and member of the Allentown Library Board.