Who Needs Computers?

Remember filmstrips? I used to look forward to Wednesday afternoons, when our fifth grade teacher would dim the lights, pull down the screen, and advance the projector to an electronic beep. All her pupils loved 'em. For the next hour, we didn't have to think.

Teachers liked filmstrips, too: arms folded in the back of the class, they didn't have to teach. The principal approved, too—proof that Buffalo Public School #61 was at the cutting edge of educational technology. Parents, back then, demanded filmstrips… the modern, multimedia way to bring the latest information into the classroom. A win-win situation that bypassed textbooks and old-style classrooms.

But no learning took place.

You've seen as many filmstrips as I have—probably a hundred. Okay, name three that had a lasting effect on your life. Now, name three teachers. What's most important in a classroom? A good teacher interacting with motivated students. Anything that separates them—filmstrips, instructional videos, multimedia displays, networked e-mail, television sets, or interactive computers—is of dubious educational value.

Yesterday's filmstrip has morphed into today's school computer. Promoted as a solution to some mysterious crisis in the classroom, computers have been welcomed uncritically across the educational spectrum. Our president promotes wiring the nation's high schools. Elementary schools seek grants for hardware and software. Colleges invest in distance learning.

So what problem does the computer in the school solve? Certainly not lack of information—every schoolteacher I've met tells me that they have far too much information. Do computers teach reading and a love of books? Hardly. Graphics, not words, are the primary message on virtually all Web pages. Rather than encouraging creative writing, networked computers promote a copy-and-paste attitude that promotes plagiarism and denigrates scholarship.

Certainly, you can't read a book on a computer screen—it's painful. For all the hoopla over e-texts, you can't read a novel online. For all the claims of educational technologists, a child in front of a computer is pretty much like a child in front of a TV set. Is the big problem facing our children that they can't get enough electronic messages? That they don't watch enough TV? Are our teenagers afraid of computers? Do they have attention spans that are too long? Do we worry that our children hold their teachers in too high respect? If these are the problems of our students, then yes, give 'em computers.

But perhaps our students already spend too much time in front of the tube, bombarded by video messages. Maybe the school should be a place where reading is placed foremost. Perhaps schools should avoid electronic escapes and work, instead, against online addictions. A great school doesn't need computers. A terrific teacher can inspire and motivate without preprogrammed video graphics. A roomful of Pentium computers and a high-bandwidth Internet feed won't much improve a poor school. A PowerPoint display—complete with bullet charts and dancing sprites—can't kindle zeal, loyalty, or a fascination. A diet of videotapes, televisions, and computers discourages kids from reading. A river of instant electronic answers dampens curiosity.

Oh, but isn't a high-tech education essential to prepare our children for jobs of the future? Nope. Hey, hop into my time machine and visit the world of 2101. Ping! You're here at the dawn of the 22nd century. First thing you'll notice is that we're all dead. Almost everyone from the 20th century is dead. Most of our children are dead. Our grandkids now run the country, and our great-grandchildren complain about it.

What jobs will be around in 2101? No surprise that they're pretty much the same jobs available a century before: dentists, truck drivers, surgeons, ballet dancers, salespeople, entertainers, and schoolteachers. In the next century, there'll still be movie stars, morticians, gardeners, forest rangers, and police officers. Yep, in a hundred years, we'll still have lawyers and politicians. Curious thing about all those jobs—none of them requires computing. The main skill of a dentist is the ability to fix and maintain teeth. That's a skill that you can't download from any Web site. Who'd visit a dentist whose experience in root canals was learned from a multimedia CD-ROM?

There's another skill that every good dentist needs, whether in 2001 or 2101—the ability to inspire confidence and trust. It might show up as a pat on the shoulder, "After the Novocain wears off, your tooth may hurt," she'll say. "But in a week, your tooth will feel fine. Trust me." Trust. The ability to inspire confidence. You can't get that from the Internet. Quite the opposite: time spent prowling the network are hours that dull the very skills necessary to get along with others.

I've rarely heard of anyone dismissed for inadequate computer skills. People mainly get fired for being unable to get along with others. Tomorrow's jobs, like today's, will belong to those with social skills. Yet the time we spend behind a keyboard dulls those essential abilities. If we wish to create a world of isolates—a society where people cannot get along with each other—I can hardly think of a better way than to shove children into cyberspace and tell 'em to communicate electronically.

In the world of 2101, I'll bet that we'll still need plumbers… somehow, I can't imagine drainpipes and toilets that will be unclogged by clicking on an icon. Where'll those 22nd-century plumbers learn their craft? Today, in the San Francisco Bay area, Web programmers get $30 an hour… pretty good wages. Yet plumbers charge more than twice as much. How come?

Part of the reason for that expense is overhead—a plumber needs a truckload of tools while the programmer is content with a computer and phone line. A part of the disparity is due to immediacy: I can live quite well for a month without a computer. But when my kitchen sink's plugs up, I need a plumber right away. But there's another, overlooked reason for the price difference between plumbers and programmers. Around San Francisco, every school teaches computing. Almost none teach the trades: auto mechanics, cabinet making, or plumbing. When every student—good and bad—is pressed to become a computer maven, and only the incompetents are allowed to become plumbers, neither our programs nor our pipes will hold water.

Other important skills in life can't be learned from the Internet. The ability to stand up and speak to an audience. Dexterity with a musical instrument. The confidence to make a cold sales call. The gift of party banter. The ability to catch a fly ball (several baseball scouts blame America's scarcity of pitchers on kids' love affair with computer games).

So what do our electronic gizmos actually teach? Check out the popular children's software program NFL Math. It's designed around professional football and is supposed to teach arithmetic. "Packed with photo-realistic animations," this program "makes hitting a wide receiver with a pass more fun than hitting the books." It promises such "learning skills" as addition, fractions, statistics, and percentages. The kids get to watch short segments of poorly animated football segments, interrupted by half-baked math questions ("Which is more yards rushed—1,182 or 1,207?"). Result? Your children will "Score better grades in math!" Uh, right.

The program forces the child to do a math problem in order to be rewarded with two minutes of entertainment. Then the torture begins anew. What a great way to teach hatred of math.

I plunked down $30 to buy a copy of Math Blaster—it, too, is supposed to teach arithmetic. The screen shows an equation, 4 + 3 = ?, for example, and you're supposed to shoot down the number-seven UFO.

You're right: it's an electronic form of flash cards. But there's a difference. At least with flash cards, there's a parent or a teacher involved. With Math Blaster and its brethren, a child is a pigeon trapped in a Skinner box, rewarded for pressing the right button.

These programs typically present questions in the format "4 + 3 = ?" They accept only the obvious answers. A good teacher might well ask, "Seven equals what?" That's a fascinating question with an infinite number of answers: "three plus four," "ten minus three," "the number of days in a week," "the dwarves in Snow White," "the number of deadly sins," "the Seven Immortals of the Wine Cup," "the group of painters who revolutionized Canadian art," "the number of Samurai in Kurasawa's best movie," "the German expression Siebensachen, which means everything you own." These answers, incomprehensible to any computer, make perfect sense to a real teacher… and open up whole fields for creative discussion. What began as an arithmetic question blossoms into a lesson on language, art, science, history, or culture.

You'll find the big lie in educational technology shrink-wrapped around CD-ROMs and blazoned on the Web pages of technoeducators. Just buy this product and it will "Make Learning Fun."

Perhaps I'm the only one in North America who believes that learning isn't fun. That quality learning requires work. Discipline. Commitment, from both teacher and student. Responsibility—you have to do your homework. There's no shortcut to a quality education. And the payoff isn't an adrenaline rush, but a deep satisfaction arriving weeks, months, or even years later. Equating learning with fun says that if you don't enjoy yourself, you're not learning.

What good are these gadgets to a child who can't pay attention in class, won't read more than a paragraph, and is unable to write analytically? If kids watch too much television at home, why feed 'em multimedia television in school?

Turning learning into fun denigrates the most important things we can do in life: to learn and to teach. It cheapens both process and product: dedicated teachers try to entertain, students expect to learn without working, and scholarship becomes a computer game.

Computing, of course, changes how we view our libraries. Sandi Webb, a council person in Simi Valley, CA, wants to close the community library system. She says: "We need to rip out those useless bookcases, filled with outdated books that are seldom opened, and replace them with low-cost computers and CD-ROMs and high-speed Internet access lines."

Yee-haw! Computers will eliminate those pesky libraries. Get rid of them books. After the book burning festival, let's eliminate local politicians, now that computers and telephones let us instantly vote on issues.

Next to churches and day care centers, libraries are about the most underfunded and under-appreciated of our society's institutions. The field receives so little respect that library schools are changing their names to "Schools of Information Management." Apparently embarrassed by their lack of status, many librarians now call themselves information specialists.

Of course, practically every person is an information specialist. A baker specializes in information about breads and cakes. A historian is certainly an information specialist. So is a doctor. Taxicab drivers, too. "Information specialist" is a meaningless, generic title.

I may not know what an information specialist does, but I sure know what a librarian oughta do. For two millennia, they've been stewards of books, charged with organizing, cataloging, preserving, and making books available. Our cornucopia of historical appreciation, technological progress, and cultural awareness isn't the result of a team of information specialists; rather it's due to centuries of rarely thanked librarians.

As librarians turn their backs on their heritage and press their faces against their monitors, our book collections become less well preserved, less organized, and less available. Their name change symbolizes a transformation of librarians from stewards of our cultural endowment to professional information handlers. They're now at home answering e-mail, reading Internet mailing lists, and surfing the Web. Can't blame them: it's far more fun to check out some Usenet scuttlebutt than deal with a confused patron at the reference desk.

But the responsibility of librarians isn't to some mythical Internet noncommunity or the faceless contributors of a dozen mailing lists. They're called by a real community of living souls, who want to instill a love of reading in their children. They're asked to show a love of books, not competence in gadgetry.

No surprise that librarians who stand up against the electronic dogma are routinely ignored and marginalized. Technologists detest any criticism: write an editorial confronting the government, and nobody will call you an anarchist. Publish a book that's critical of the Pope and even a devout Catholic won't accuse you of being an atheist. But exert a healthy skepticism toward computers, and you're labeled "Luddite" and told to live in a cave without electricity or water.

Without much debate, the technological juggernaut chews through library funding. According to a survey in School Library Journal, 1994 school expenditures on audiovisual and computer equipment roughly equaled book costs. By 1998, computers were way ahead of books. This difference has mushroomed. For example, the 2002 budget for the North Collins Central School in western New York calls for $255,000 to be spent on computer-assisted instruction. Books and supplies? A bit under $12,000.

Contrast a well-cataloged collection of books, magazines, and newspapers with two dozen high-tech Internet workstations, complete with multimedia software. Which will last longer? Which will better serve a neighborhood of children, young adults, adults, and elderly? Which promotes reading, study, and reflection? Which is more likely to be seen as a toy? Which will better preserve our heritage and foster a sense of scholarship and friendship? What'll happen when the Internet is universally available and nobody needs to visit the library to search for information? Will libraries close up when trendy "information gateway" grants evaporate?

Hmmm. Which would most improve your library: a gift of two dozen computers? A thousand books? A library assistant for a year? The cost is about the same, but somehow philanthropists choose the first. Is the wiring of our libraries a good way to teach the love of reading? Well, I can't think of a more effective way to destroy a library. Burning books won't work—centuries of fanatics, censors, and dictators have tried and failed. And you can't close down libraries by political fiat: they're far too popular in neighborhoods.

No, the best way to gut our libraries is to hide the books in closets and warehouses, supplant librarians with generic information specialists, and replace reading carrels with gleaming computer workstations. Hunt down grants for computers and software that will quickly become obsolete. Provide patrons with CD-ROMs and high-speed Internet ports. Encourage kids to surf the Web rather than read books. Count hits on your Web page instead of the number of visitors to the stacks. Pretty soon, readers will avoid the library.

I'm outraged by this relentless evisceration of my libraries. I'm furious to see the debasement of learning by technology. And I'm saddened as I witness so many librarians permitting the slow undoing of those cultural institutions that have served our society for millennia. For, in the fight for liberty and literacy, our finest weapons are books and libraries. Use them. Appreciate them. Support them.