The need to close the "digital divide" that exists between schools that can afford to make technology a pervasive influence on children's education and those that cannot has started to become conventional wisdom in American politics.
Now a group of educators, doctors, psychologists and others is asking whether or not the influence of technology might actually keep students from the best education, the New York Times reports.
The members of the Alliance for Childhood argue that current approaches to the use of technology in education are more flash than substance, discouraging critical thinking about technology in favor of vocational skills and impersonal educational software, the Times reports.
By immersing children in computers from elementary age, schools are not giving children the skills and distance needed to make informed decisions about technology later in life, according to the alliance's draft statement on technological literacy.
Also, teaching children vocational skills on computers at a very young age makes little sense, alliance members argue, given that their skills are likely to be outmoded in the years before graduation.
The alliance plans to incorporate as a formal nonprofit organization, the Times reports. Founding members include Joan Almon, a teacher and consultant; Jane M. Healey, an educational psychologist who has written a critique of computers in education; Stephen L. Talbott, editor of an electronic newsletter on the social effects of technology; and Bettye Caldwell, former president of the National Association for the Education of Young People.
The group's mandate is wider than technology in schools -- they see their mission as fighting the "toxic cultural environment" they blame for a rise in health problems and stress in children -- but the group is first concentrating on what they see as an overenthusiastic acceptance of the next big thing.
"There's been this powerful general sense that the next new technology -- radio, television, now the Web -- was absolutely essential for education," Talbott told the Times. "But then each one gets abandoned and the next one embraced without anyone asking: 'Are we any more clear on it this time?'"
However, not everyone agrees with the group's thesis. Keith R. Krueger, executive director of the Consortium for School Networking, says that children come to like using computers at a very early age, calling the technology "a very powerful tool" for education.
"To say you don't want to use educational technology at an elementary school level seems silly," Krueger told the Times. "The real question isn't whether we should have computers or not in classrooms. It is how do we capture the excitement and enthusiasm and apply it for educational purposes."
The authors of the alliance draft -- which includes the group's recommendations for use of technology in education -- are asking for responses to it on their Web site.
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education/15education.html
