There has been quite a bit of buzz today about an article in the New York Times “critical of computers in classrooms.” This comes a week or two after the buzz about another report questioning the value of various educational software programs.
But in this recent article it’s not clear exactly what it is they are criticizing. The article describes various efforts in different parts of the country where tax dollars have been spent to acquire technology for classrooms with the apparent expectation that it would result in increased test scores. From the NYT article “’After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none,’ said Mark Lawson, the school board president here in Liverpool, one of the first districts in New York State to experiment with putting technology directly into students’ hands.”
In another section of the article they state:
Matoaca High School just outside Richmond, Va., began eliminating its five-year-old laptop program last fall after concluding that students had failed to show any academic gains compared with those in schools without laptops. Continuing the program would have cost an additional $1.5 million for the first year alone, and a survey of district teachers and parents found that one-fifth of Matoaca students rarely or never used their laptops for learning. “You have to put your money where you think it’s going to give you the best achievement results,” said Tim Bullis, a district spokesman.
So, let me get this right…the students were not using the laptops…AND….they were not “showing academic gains compared to those students without laptops….” So the problem was the laptops, right?
This is sounding very John Stewartish – I know; but bear with me.
In the next paragraph the Times states:
Northfield Mount Hermon School, a private boarding school in western Massachusetts, eliminated its five-year-old laptop program in 2002 after it found that more effort was being expended on repairing the laptops than on training teachers to teach with them.
Okay, so now we got defective laptops, or we had a bad contract with a repair service, or we had people who did not know how to use them to begin with and kept breaking them or …?
I think I really know what the problem is - money. You can read it between the lines.
Okay, I was not going to get into the $2,000 pencil argument, but I am going to tell you about my personal experience with various “tools” for learning. Sorry, I am old so it is a bit of a long story.
When I was a lad, attending a Catholic school in Brooklyn, NY, where my parents paid tuition, each student was expected to come to school equipped with various “tools” supplied by their parents. In first grade nearly 50 years ago, the requirement was to bring two pencils and a box of crayons (an eight crayon box of Crayolas was the requirement - not the larger 24 or extravagant 64 crayon box) for use in school. Each day my mother would make sure I had my pencils in my pencil case, in my school bag along with my lunch box and milk money – the crayons stayed in school for safe keeping. Viscerally, I can still remember the smell of leather, pencil lead, wax and sour milk.
In second or third grade, when we were first instructed in Penmanship in “script,” the required equipment sheet was expanded to include a cartridge-filed fountain pen. Personally, I kept the Wearever Pen Company in business for several years. For you see, in 1960 every little boy in the America (and probably the Soviet Union) wanted to be an astronaut and, in the eyes of little boys, fountain pens made terrific prototype rocket ships. This phenomenon inevitably led to a multitude of ink spills and many broken fountain pen points.
Apparently, in 1960 it was a sin for Catholic School children to use ballpoint pens, because they were absolutely forbidden in my school. But by about 1965, the Pope interceded and removed the ban from ballpoint pens and placed it squarely upon an altogether new evil - “the felt tipped marker” – you know, those Flair pens that were becoming so popular. But I digress.
By the time I was in high school there was a new "tools" of learning expectation. Many, if not all, of my school reports would need to be typed on a typewriter – remember those?
We had an old used Royal classic that my dad brought home one day. It weighed about 30 pounds and I quickly taught myself to type using the time-honored, hunt-and-peck approach. My parents also provided the large amounts of erasable bond and carbon paper.
The schools I attended never provided any of these “tools” for learning. In fact there were quite a few additional things parents were expected to provide including notebooks and binders with loose leaf paper, lunchboxes, book bags, rulers, protractors, compasses and lots of other stuff. I suspect that for those kids whose parents couldn’t afford all that stuff, there were some exceptions made or things donated, but I think there had always been an expectation that students come to school with at least some of the “tools” for learning.
So, now let’s move ahead a few decades and enter the world of information technology. And here’s where we get back to the issue in the New York Times article. The central issue of this article not about the efficacy of technology in the classroom, it is about who should pay for technology in the classroom.
I don’t think anyone can argue that technology has a no place in schools or that the students of today don't need to be technologically literate. I also don’t think anyone would argue about the importance and ubiquitous nature of IT in the workplace. So what is the problem?
Schools have been providing “microcomputers” in classrooms for about thirty years. Some affluent communities and specialized high schools provided some form of data processing as early as the late 1960s, but with the advent of the small microcomputers of the late 1970s and early 1980s the potential to have a computer in every classroom became a possibility and inevitability. Throughout this period, technology was generally provided by the school so districts and communities that had more resources generally had more technology to go around. And the poorest districts, well they got....
When the Maine Governor Angus King proposed what would eventually be called the Maine Learning Technology Initiative, it was not about getting computers into classrooms, it was about leveling the playing field; it was about making sure all middle school students in Maine had equal access to information technology.
So, now people are trying to justify the money spent. Who should be surprised? But, I wonder if we are returning to a point where the public will now expect students to come to school with the “tools” for learning – now including a laptop computer - in the same way little John brought with his two pencils and box of eight Crayolas so many years ago.
One last thought – people teach people.
Think about it.
~John Brandt
The Appropriations Committee of the Maine State Legislature passed the compromise school district consolidation plan today. The proposal, which is part of the proposed state budget, moves to the full House and Senate next week. 
