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Naturally, I am told that I am full of it. Computers are wonderful for children. Why just look how smart they are on the computer, look at all the neat things they can do and the pretty pictures they can make. They are on the internet learning so much about the world. With all this information they are going to be smarter than the generations before them. To all of this I say “bullshit”. And, not that I need anyone to tell me I’m right (as I always am) still it’s nice to find somebody else who has it right.
Jane M. Healy has all the qualifications I don’t have (of course I don’t need them, I have common sense): She has a Ph.D. and her past experiences include serving as an educational psychologist, a professional educator (classroom teacher, college professor, reading and learning specialist, elementary school administrator) and she has authored three previous books. In Failure To Connect (FTC) she lays out why computers are bad for children and what we can do about it. I found myself in agreement with most every thought she put forward. One really useful thing about this book: If you have children, Healy gives you guidelines for determining how much computer exposure your children should have, how to select software for them and how to tell if they are actually learning anything from computer use.
When I was in high school we got some computers, TRS-80s (trash 80s as they were known back then). No one knew a thing about them, including the teacher they turned them over to. Roger & myself were elected to figure out how to run the things. We taught ourselves some programming (for the dumb people, there was no Windoze back in this day) and DOS skills, then showed the teacher what we came up with and she taught the class. It was a matter of deciding what we wanted the computer to do then figuring out how to make it do that.
But teaching computers to students these days seems to involve cute programs where you click on the talking puppy and it jumps up and down, or you answer a math problem correctly and get to blow up spaceships, or you arrange some clip art, print it out and call this “art”.
Healy goes into classrooms across the country & takes a long hard look at how computers are being used. Her findings are not encouraging. Sitting in front of a computer does not equate learning. As I am fond of saying “having information is not the same thing as being intelligent”. From Healy’s book:
In one computer lab (with one teacher trying to supervise eighteen children and troubleshoot almost continual technical glitches), I observed a seven-year-old girl who provided an unfortunate example of how easily unguided computer use can lead to “shallow processing”. She spent the entire period locating, downloading and staring at a map of Africa. She had obviously done this routine before, and as she gazed intently at the screen, I assumed she must be examining the geographical features of the continent. Finally I inquired, “What do you find so interesting there?”
“Oh, I just like to look at maps,” she replied.
“What is the name of that map you are looking at?”
“I don’t know. I just like to look at maps.”
“What’s this line here?” I indicate a huge river. “Or this?” for the ocean.
“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “I just like to look at maps.”
Surely there are much deeper and brain-building ways for her to enter the world of visual symbols.
It could simply be that due to the idiots in the school system and the idiots who inhabit this country this child has been allowed to develop into an idiot like the rest. The real problem here is that the average adult will see this little zombie lost in trace with the computer screen and think “that little girl is learning so much on the internet, she is going to be a genius”. It’s hard to say which of them is stupider, child or adult. At least the children have an excuse, they don’t know any better. Computers have also served to substitute entertainment for learning. More from Healy:
Sceptical teachers point out that they already see negative effects from television and video games. In fact, students who have spent a great deal of time with video games tend to find even educational computers uninteresting.
“The worst sin today is to be ‘boring’,” commented one math teacher recently. “I am so tired of these kids expecting to be entertained - they don’t have the patience of a flea!”
Employers are beginning to complain that many new workers can’t solve problems that require initiative, persistence, and independent thinking. “It’s really different from even ten years ago,” one director of a company told me. “If the solution isn’t obvious, they haven’t a clue. What do you suppose this means for the future?”
I know what it means, it means a future of stupid & dense people who can only find the obvious. It means people who will not be able to create things, such as poetry, sculpture, mathematical theorems and mechanical devices. It will mean a future where people don’t care about the past since they can not see any immediate relevance in what happened in the Roman Empire. It means people who can not even understand science or art or literature. It will mean we will come ever closer to the Brave New World of Alphas, Betas and Gammas. Healy brings up an interesting point which I never thought of, but not that I have processed it I find that I must agree totally.
Right now, the clamour is for getting computers in schools. We are being told that the “rich” schools have plenty of computers and the “poor” schools do not. This is an inequity and is damaging the poor kids. In order to equalise things, we must get computers in all the schools. Healy’s vision takes us into the future where things come full circle. One day she anticipates that all schools will have computers, and in fact most learning will be computer based. Actual teachers (which we are already very short on) will give way to teacher / technicians, their main job -- to keep the computers working, with the children as a secondary objective. At this point we will find that the “poor” schools will consist of masses of students stuck in front of screens all day learning from software, while the “rich” schools will have teachers and utilise a more traditional format which moves away from heavy computer use, thus producing people far more able to think, imagine and reason. The “poor”, thinking they are educated due to the presence of computers, will in fact be even stupider than before.
Healy shows over and over in examples where children using educational software simply click on each of the different possible solutions until they happen to hit the right one. This can hardly be called learning. Do you want one of these children repairing the air plane you are about to fly on? They will just try the first solution that presents its self, and if the air plane crashes, they will move on to the second solution next time they have to fix a similar problem. Not very effective problem solving. We can not be teaching people that it’s OK to guess until you stumble upon the solution. Sometimes guessing wrong has consequences.
Not only do the kids end up being dumb, but their brains end up being permanently damaged. Talk to most anyone under 20 and you will see the evidence. Most of the teenagers I know & have worked with are incredibly stupid and ignorant of the world, further they are willing to believe almost anything without a second thought. As for things like creativity, art, literature, history -- they have no use for it. Mostly I believe because they can not understand any of it. More from FTC:
Much creative invention depends on mental imagery, yet teachers find that today’s video-immersed children can’t form original pictures in their mind or develop an imaginative representation. Teachers of young children lament the fact that many now have to be taught to play symbolically or pretend -- previously a symptom only of mentally or emotionally disordered youngsters.
I see this in my daily dealings with people. As a practitioner of NLP I often ask people to visualise or go back to peak experiences in their lives. With the 20 and under crowd I find not only do they not have peak experiences (and how could one have an exciting life from a keyboard) but if they have had one, they can not recall or visualise it. Another aspect of NLP is finding out what is important to people about the things they enjoy. When I ask someone who is 60 “what do you enjoy about painting” I get a 10 minute response. Providing someone under 20 has a hobby other that alcohol, drugs and fucking, if I ask them the same question I get “I don’t know....” and a blank stare. If you do something, and you enjoy doing it, yet you don’t know why -- this is either brain damage or some form of emotional or intellectual retardation. Yes, it’s rooted in the fact that you have no imagination, no ability to consolidate abstract thoughts into words, pictures or ideas, but these are not the roots, only the symptoms.
This is why I want to bioengineer a virus that will kill everyone under 25. These people are not going to advance society or culture, they will simply waste resources that could be used for actual humans. But I digress...
Now, like most things computers are neither “evil” nor “good”. It’s all in the application and certainly computers do have their place. Healy takes care to show us times and places where computers help students to go beyond traditional limits and actually learn, create, explore and grow. She visits one class room where students are gathering weather data and feeding it into a computer system which combines data from classrooms doing the same thing all over America so that the students can track the emergence of spring. The students are not just putting numbers into computers to make pretty maps, they are learning about the different types clouds, how to measure rain fall over an area and communicating this information with their peers. In addition, the experiment is overseen, via the internet, by a group of meteorologist who help to keep them accurate in their data collection methods.
Computers also allow children to interact with people beyond their usual scope. From FTC:
By age sixteen, Dania knows she want to be a veterinarian. In her small southern town, however, girls don’t often go to college (my note: is this a swipe at the south? I’m really getting tired of that shit), and no one at the high school can advise her. She is about to give up her dream when her science teacher learns about a program sponsored by the Educational Development Centre for Children and Technology in New York City. Young women interested in technical and scientific careers meet on-line with women who work in these fields. Dania and her new mentor, Laura, communicate regularly; Laura is an engineer, but she takes a personal interest in Dania’s courses, helps her find a summer internship in veterinary medicine, and encourages her to go to college.
However, just so you don’t think I’m now a convert to the computer age, another excerpt from FTC:
I am at a reception in a university town on the West Coast, talking to a professor who has discovered I am writing a book about kids and technology. he want to tell me about his six-year-old son.
“You should see Justin on the computer! Right now he has this thing about geology, and he’s memorised all the different kinds of rocks from a program I got him. He’s learning the names of the geologic periods, too. He’s used the computer ever since he was two -- he’d see my wife and me on ours and he wanted to do it too. Now he’d rather work on the computer than play with his toys.”
“How much time does Justin spend on his computer?”
My new acquaintance looks uncomfortable. I have the feeling he has been asked this question before. “Oh, well . . .um, well . . . we try to limit him to maybe three hours a day. We have trouble keeping him away from it -- but we think it’s great how much he’s learning.”
“Does he play with other kids?”
“Well, um . . . his brother some, but he’s so eager to learn, we don’t want to discourage him.”
“How about reading? He’s in first grade -- is he starting to read?”
“Well, um . . . that’s not coming quite as fast as some of the other things.”
I decide, during my consultation at Justin’s school the next day, to take a look at this mini-prodigy. I locate his first-grade classroom and slide quietly in the door. All the children are working in pairs, reading to each other from beginning-reading book. All, that is, except one pale little fellow who crouches under a table, nervously leafing through a stack of pictures of rock formations. As the teacher calls the class to line up for gym, this youngster is the only one who resists.
“Now Justin,” she says, gently prodding him out from under the table. “Remember, you agreed you would try your best today.”
Reluctantly, Justin unwinds himself from the table leg and joins the group. Two classmates move to make a place for him in line, but Justin pushes them aside and goes to the end where he stands slightly apart.
After the class has left for gym, I chat with the teacher and learn the following: Justin has severe social problems, is totally “uninterested” in reading or in most other school activities, and reacts to emotional stress like a much younger child. Even when the class goes to the computer lab he’s is unable to work co-operatively.
“I really can’t figure him out,” comments his teacher. “It’s like he missed a few steps somewhere in his development. The psychologist came in to observe him last week and told me she thought his social skills were about on the level of a three-year-old.”
“But isn’t he quite bright?” I enquire.
“You’d never know it in here,” she sighs. “He can spout a lot of facts [note from skip dogg, once again, information does not equal intelligence] -- he’s into rocks now, earlier this year it was dinosaurs -- but he can’t seem to make connections. We’re very concerned about him.”
I follow Justin, curious about what I will see. He appears to have the symptoms of a disorder called social-emotional learning disability (SELD). Often, these youngsters are also clumsy, poorly co-ordinated. I watch Justin dribbling a ball -- by himself. He is apathetic, but certainly not clumsy. Nothing seems quite to fit here. Eventually, I track down the psychologist.
“What’s the deal with Justin? Are we looking at SELD?”
“He doesn’t really fit the profile. He’s a mystery to us,” she replies.
“Do you suppose all the time he’s spent on a computer instead of playing and socialising could have anything to do with it?” I ask gingerly.
She rolls her eyes. “Of course it does, and we’re starting to see more kids like this. But Dad thinks it’s a sign of genius. They’ve got a very unhappy little boy, and I’m afraid they’re in for big trouble. We’ve got a conference scheduled next week.”
And while we are on the subject of normal development and lack there of, one last passage from the book:
At a reception on the White House lawn following a conference on early childhood brain development and learning, I am talking with two noted paediatric neurologists who are interested in the book I am writing.
“Well tell those parents not to let those kids spend so much time on the computer!” exclaims one doctor. “I’m seeing these kids who’ve spent hours and hours and some of the actually look autistic.”
The other nods her head. “It’s true. We’re seeing more and more. The computer is substituting for personal contact and for other activities in so many households. Language, social skills, the ability to play imaginatively -- they’re all suffering.”
“Are you serious? Surely, computer use couldn’t make a child autistic.” I am incredulous. I have read the research and I know that true autism is a brain-based disorder that develops irrespective of home environment, although extreme variations in experience can either mimic some of it’s symptoms or bring them out in a vulnerable child.
The doctors exchange a knowing look. “These days we’re not exactly sure how we’re defining autism,” one finally says. “Well, let’s just say ‘autistic-like’,” they agree.
Healy also correctly points out the effects using a computer for extended time periods has on the body. Posture & eyesight especially. Those of you who use computers often know how it can buzz your eyes. I have 3 computer games which I enjoy. One of them is Age of Empires. A typical game can run 2 to 4 hours, I have found myself playing a 6 hour game now & then. Afterwards, my eyes feel like they are going to explode. What do you think this is doing to a child’s eyes? Also, the traditional computer screen is white with black text, I suppose modelled after books, yet the reverse is much more restful on the eyes. Right now I have a black background with yellow text and it is much easier to read. Try it on your own system and I’m sure you will notice the difference.
Healy interlaces interesting quotes from people she encounters throughout the book. Some examples:
“Some people enjoy sitting and doing a Web search. I would rather look it up [in a book]. It’s more work so I think it is more rewarding when you have finished doing the work.” --Christopher, age ten
“I think that some computers are too smart for you!” --Rebeca, age nine.
“Some people choose computers over their own family!” --Christopher, age ten
“We hear constantly about cyberspace as a place of connections made between all kinds of people who would not have come together before. Perhaps. But every one of them has connected by being alone, in front of a computer screen, and this is a poor excuse for what community has meant for most of history.” --Paul Goldberger, in the New York Times
I think there is a perverse sickness in telling people they are smart because they can click on a picture and see another picture, or telling them they are smart because they have a stack of CDs with all sorts of information on them. As Healy says:
Overall, it is far more important to raise our children to be good people than to be founts of information. After all, Hitler had plenty of information. The term “saturated self” was coined by psychologist Kenneth Gergen to describe an empty individual at the mercy of a constant bombardment of information and input. “What I call the technologies of social saturation are central to the contemporary erasure of the individual self,” he warns.
Skip Dogg says this: Once again, information does not equal intelligence. Read this book. Bask in the wisdom. Learn Grasshopper.
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