ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 4, 1996 TAG: 9603040076
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: EDWARD MILLER
``EVERY CLASSROOM in America must be connected to the information superhighway,'' President Clinton told us in his State of the Union address. My reaction: Why?
The assumption underlying this and other simplistic prescriptions for remaking American schools with technology is that all you do is put kids in front of computers and they'll instantly turn to learning. If only it were that easy.
Computers - like blackboards, calculators and televisions - are tools that teachers can use wisely or poorly. If a teacher knows her students well and can focus their efforts on the mental skills they most need, such tools can be powerful. Without the knowledge and guidance of a canny teacher, however, computers can be an enormous waste of time, effort and money.
New technologies always have held out both promise and pitfalls for education. When TV was first introduced, we were told it would revolutionize schools: It would bring a world of knowledge, culture and art into the classroom. Researchers conducted studies supposedly proving that televised instruction was more effective than a live teacher's.
No one makes such claims now, even though there are excellent educational programs and some perfectly appropriate uses for television in school. We're also aware, though, of the harm that TV has done to children.
The computer also holds great promise. It has enabled children with certain disabilities to be integrated into regular classes. It can connect teachers via the Internet to share problems and solutions with colleagues across the country. It is an astonishingly powerful tool for scholars engaged in serious research.
None of this means that every classroom or even every school must have computers. Many thoughtful educators, such as those in the notably successful Waldorf School network - which stresses physical and artistic activity along with intellectual development - argue that younger children especially most need concrete, physical and artistic learning experiences. Every Waldorf student must learn to play a musical instrument, not operate a computer.
Most technology experts agree the goals of schooling should be that children learn to use their minds well, to ask good questions, to write and speak cogently, to grow as human beings - and that using computers doesn't guarantee any of these things.
Though congressional approval is unlikely, Clinton has announced a five-year, $2 billion program to put computers in classrooms all across the country and link them to the Internet. That sounds admirable because kids need computers in school so they can get jobs later. Right? No. The hardware and software of those future work places don't yet exist. The students best prepared for them will be those who have learned to use their brains - not Windows 95.
In far too many schools, teachers and students work under conditions so discouraging that the term ``information superhighway'' sounds like a joke. They would rather have heard Clinton say, ``Every classroom in America must have adequate heat, unbroken glass in the windows and a roof that doesn't leak and be connected to a decent bathroom with toilet paper in it.''
Even teachers with well-equipped classrooms almost universally lack adequate opportunities to learn - about new technologies, about the latest developments in their special fields, about strategies for helping kids who present an unprecedented array of behavioral and learning problems. Most of all, they need time to get to know each student and his or her talents and needs.
It is short-sighted to spend scarce education dollars indiscriminately on more hardware and software when we could invest in something that will never be obsolete - the strength and capacity of our teachers.
Technology is important, and the president is right to focus attention on the need for equal access to its benefits. But technology will not solve most of the problems of schools.
If we know one truth about education, it is this: Learning takes place in the context of human relationship - especially in that rare and tenuous web of connection between a knowing, caring adult and a student whose mind and heart that teacher or coach has touched. Such teachers use different tools: poems, geometric proofs, lathes, saxophones, stories of their own lives. Some even use computers.
Edward Miller is editor of Harvard Education Letter and author of ``Ready to Learn: How Schools Can Help Kids Be Healthier and Safer.'' He wrote this column for Newsday.
- L.A. Times-Washington Post News Service
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Kevin Kreneck/LATimesby CNB