- By: Cathy Gniewek, MT Publisher -

s technological driven priorities damaging our children’s education?
You don't have to look far to find a child who is so tied to his video game, wired to his MP3 player or intensely involved with his email correspondence to wonder what is this doing to the development of social skills, the appreciation of a good game of chess or the appreciation of a good book. Children today never have an opportunity to experience some of the finest things in life if they are not equipped by AAA batteries, headphones and wires. One has to question the need to have elementary school students equipped with laptops for classes, strapped into the minivan with their own library of tapes for the ride home, just to plug in their MP3 player before going to bed.   what does that say about today's social values? Has this generation found that electrical power has a new purpose -- plug in babysitter? Many educators would argue that technological skill developed early in life will aid the student's competency to achieve success. My question is how do these educators define success? Is success solely based on technological skill or should success also include social skills, relationships, appreciation of nature, the arts or even just plain conversing.

Today’s educational emphasis on technological skills is a misplaced priority. Much like the development of industrial trades at the start of the Industrial Age, computer technology is society’s perception of viability in present-day reality. Today’s technology will be obsolete before many students enter the working world.  Excess exposure to computers can teach a child to type or how to run software, but does it teach a child how to think?  Problem solving skills cannot be programmed into a child like software can be loaded into a computer.  As a society we emphasize a computer’s speed to process information, increasingly new functions and more realistic visual interpretations of real–life -- the better.  Are we so caught up in developing and promoting this future virtual world that we have lost touch with our real life children’s future?  Certainly one only needs to look at the dollar amount spent on computers and new technological advances versus the dollar amount spent on education to gauge our values.

Does technology driven education teach our children that computers are the end-all holder of knowledge -- so they do not have to learn?     No wonder why children have less patience and motivation to learn from books, play board games or anything that requires real thinking.  The thinking has already been done for them with a click of a mouse or a tap of a key.  Perhaps educators and parents alike need to re-evaluate their emphasis on technology in education and in everyday life.

John Dewey (1916; 1929; 1938) was perhaps the greatest proponent of situated learning and learning by doing. Dewey, unlike Rousseau, reacted against the traditional educational framework of memorization and recitation and argued that “education is not preparation for life, it is life itself.” Also like Rousseau, Dewey was responding to the need for restructuring education to meet the needs of society, in this case the start of the Industrial Age in America and the demands of industrial technology. Dewey argued that life, including the vocations, should form the basic context for learning. In essence, rather than learning vocations, we learned science, math, literature, etc. through vocations (Kliebard, 1986). This is similar to the current argument for “anchored instruction” in which learning any one subject is anchored in the larger community or social context (CTGV, 1992).  

At the turn of the century, the invention of  mass production and the assembly line drove society's need for  manufacturing  skills  overshadowing other educational goals.   An interesting parallel to today's drive for our children to gain computer based skills.   However, the single focused area on technology driven occupations later left many without skills to compete as the technology became obsolete.  One only has to look to today's dwindling number of  assembly line jobs to understand that  such narrowly focused skills will not be competitive in the future, when our present day computer  technology changes.

Recent pushes in the House of Representatives to pass funding for Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program for $496 million demonstrates the federal government's focus.  While increasing funding in technology driven skills is important, it comes at a cost to other, equally important areas of education -- the arts, math and science.  For it is the blending of education pursuits that will truly give our students a well rounded education and allow our children to independently  pursue whatever occupation that he or she is truly talented in.  The future world would be colorless and less rich place to live without diversity in talent, skill and choice.

No one is saying that technology based education should be eliminated, rather that its emphasis be brought into perspective.  Certainly understanding technology is an important goal, but it should not overshadow the more significant goal of education -- the child's ability to think independently.  Technology should be harnessed to promote the talents of the child not the harnessing the child's talents to promote technology.

Technology can be replicated -- one only has to look to what work has been outsourced overseas to understand that what is truly important in the future of education will be driven by a unique, innovative manner of thinking -- a thinking that will come from  a diversely talented society.  

Our future will need people that can think outside of the box, outside the program, outside  software driven ideas.  Technology education supporters often speak of how computer education teaches problem solving.  The problem solving skills taught would be focused on a single answer solution.   How many times does real life have only one correct answer?

I ask that you try to think about technology education from another perspective.   Does our drive for computer technology  lead children to believe that life is a set of problems always with a single correct answer -- one that has been programmed into society?

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