The Human Touch

I ran into a nice article in one of my favorite education sites called Education Next, which is run by the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. The article is called The Human Touch and its author is Dr. Lowell Monke, an education professor at Wittenburg University in Ohio. Dr. Monke does a nice job clarifying the limits and subtle dangers involved in the rush to implement technology in the classroom. Dr Monke makes quite a few excellent points, and his article is well worth reading. Here are just a few excerpts that I particularly enjoyed:

"A computer can inundate a child with mountains of information. However, all of this learning takes place the same way: through abstract symbols, decontextualized and cast on a two-dimensional screen. Contrast that with the way children come to know a tree–by peeling its bark, climbing its branches, sitting under its shade, jumping into its piled-up leaves. Just as important, these firsthand experiences are enveloped by feelings and associations–muscles being used, sun warming the skin, blossoms scenting the air. The computer cannot even approximate any of this."

"Not only do computers send structural ripples throughout a school system, but they also subtly alter the way we think about education. The old saw, “To a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail,” has many corollaries (the walls of my home once testified to one of my favorites: to a four-year-old with a crayon, everything looks like drawing paper). One that fits here is, “To an educator with a computer, everything looks like information.” And the more prominent we make computers in schools (and in our own lives), the more we see the rapid accumulation, manipulation, and sharing of information as central to the learning process–edging out the contemplation and expression of ideas and the gradual development of meaningful connections to the world."

"Here we encounter the ambiguity of technology: its propensity to promote certain qualities while sidelining others. McLuhan called this process amplification and amputation"  "This phenomenon is of particular concern with children, who are in the process of developing all kinds of inner capacities. Examples abound of technology’s circumventing the developmental process: the student who uses a spell checker instead of learning to spell, the student who uses a calculator instead of learning to add–young people sacrificing internal growth for external power."

"None of this is to say that we should banish computers from all levels of K-12 education. As young people move into subject areas like advanced mathematics and chemistry that rely on highly abstract concepts, computers have much to offer. Young people will also need computer skills when they graduate. But computer-based learning needs to grow out of years of concrete experience and a fundamental appreciation for the world apart from the machine, a world in which nature and human beings are able to speak for and through themselves to the child. "

And finally,

"There remains a problem, however. When (Francis) Bacon began pushing the technological ideology, Western civilization was full of meaning and wretchedly short on the material means of survival. Today we face the reverse situation: a society saturated in material comforts but almost devoid of meaning."