Digital Peril- Let’s rethink the computer-centric classroom
Gone are the days when the virtue expected of students was discipline or attention. Now we demand something more—it goes by the name “engagement.” We don’t want pupils to be obediently receptive; we want them actively and imaginatively involved. The aspiration, of course, is admirable. In his wonderful 1945 book, Teacher in America, Jacques Barzun stated that “the whole aim of good teaching is to turn the young learner, by nature a little copycat, into an independent, self-propelling creature, who cannot merely learn but study—that is, work as his own boss to the limit of his powers.”
The latest means to this noble end is the computer-centric classroom, where students will be motivated to embrace self-directed learning through technological devices equipped with educational software. In other words, the gizmos and games to which young people are already addicted are expected to become humanizing and civilizing instruments. The students’ digitized learning will be helped along by a teacher who has migrated from being “a sage on the stage to a guide on the side” (as the mantra of the new movement puts it).
Cutting-edge school districts around the country are experimenting with this classroom of the future, including the hoped-for transformation of teachers into tech-ers. Recently, the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to issue “A Digital Promise to Our Nation’s Children.” Duncan declared that “technology could personalize and accelerate instruction for students.”
Is a computer in every lap the answer to our education troubles? There are reasons for doubt. A recent front-page story in the New York Times reported on the disappointing results from an Arizona school district that since 2005 has invested heavily in technology. While test scores statewide have been rising, the reading and math results in the district of Kyrene have stagnated, prompting debate about the place of technology in schools. This debate is all the more important now that government and private business seem primed to fund a tech-infusion. (To signal the public-private partnership on this front, Secretary Duncan’s co-author for the Wall Street Journal op-ed was Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix.)
So let’s ponder what education—the so-called “knowledge-based industry”—in America is going to look like. Sometimes an anecdote reveals more than all the studies and graphs. Here is one of Kyrene’s twenty-first century classrooms…