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Criticism of Instructional technology

Orion > Orion Magazine > September | October 2005 > Lowell Monke > Charlotte's Webpage

A thoughtful criticism of instructional technology, specifically the use of computers in education. Thinking about this some, it seems that Monke's arguments/complaints are similar to those of Al Gore in his speech "American Democracy in Trouble." Technology, digital computers says Monke and television says Gore, separates us from nature and each other. Does the term alienation ring a bell?

A couple of quotes:

more recent research, including a University of Munich study of 174,000 students in thirty-one countries, indicates that students who frequently use computers perform worse academically than those who use them rarely or not at all.

educational computing is neither a revolution nor a passing fad, but a Faustian bargain. Children gain unprecedented power to control their external world, but at the cost of internal growth. During the two decades that I taught young people with and about digital technology, I came to realize that the power of computers can lead children into deadened, alienated, and manipulative relationships with the world, that children's increasingly pervasive use of computers jeopardizes their ability to belong fully to human and biological communities—ultimately jeopardizing the communities themselves.

Certainly worth reading and thinking about.

Monke makes similar points in his 1999 article. Computers in Schools: by Lowell Monke

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1949

Posted by ernie at October 7, 2005 06:49 AM