Editorial:Computers and Education

Mike Hughes has written an editorial on Computers and L-12 Education. Mike is a High School Student, and experiencing the problems first hand. He talks about the restrictions placed on the computers by his school, the social issues related to technology and education. It's a difficult issue, and one that I bet most of us can relate to. Read what he has to say, we won't solve this, but we sure can't make things worse *grin*.

The following is an editorial by Slashdot Reader Mike Hughes

Computer Education
The problem with typical K-12 computer education today
by Mike Hughes

Lately, the Clinton Administration has been expressing support for wiring up every class room (or at least every school) to the internet. This sounds great at first, but one must look deeper into what's involved, and how the schools are currently handling the situations presented.

The internet, as the government paints it, will allow every student to collaborate online and in realtime with other students across the country, and even the world. If they need help with homework, just go online. If they need to do research, they can find it online! This is the image that the public gets. This is the wrong image.

As a high school student myself, I have experienced the public education system first hand, as I'm sure the vast majority of the general population has. What sets my generation apart from the previous, though, is the penetration of computer technology into the classrooms of America. The way that the schools handle computer technology is very discouraging.

At the school that I attend (and I assume this school can be representative of the typical american high school in terms of attitude towards technology and use of it) the main internet connection is a fractional T1 line, which I suspect is being run at the rate of 256 kilobits per second. The school will eventually be wired with ethernet subnets, and a yet-to-be-determined backbone technology which uses a fiber optic medium to transmit data. All departments will eventually have state-of-the-art computers. However, as I said, this is an average school. Schools out there have everything from full capacity T1 lines to 14.4 kbps dialup lines to America Online.

There's just one problem at my high school. They discourage all conversation using their computers. This includes electronic mail, internet chat, and world-wide-web based mail services such as hotmail. Furthermore, the internet connection provided is woefully inadequate. Remember, there's going to be a whole school doing multimedia-intensive work on the internet, collaborating with peers and teachers online through the great internet. A fractional T1 would barely be enough to handle one computer, let alone dozens. Currently, the whole district (over a dozen schools) shares a single full capacity T1.

Of course, these are all technological problems. They can be solved. In fact, I'm sure that most schools of the future will have at least full-fledged T1 or higher links to the internet. It's all about funding. You see, providing all this great technology does no good if it's done in quantity and not in quality. It does no good for a student to wait 30 minutes to download some research. He needs it now. He needs it quick. He could probably go to the library and look up some information in an encyclopedia faster than it would take to download the pages and pages of graphical information that would serve him correctly.

Another problem is the actual information they're teaching to kids, and the attitude kids have on technology. This too is dissapointing. K-12 children spend years and years learning how to play games and operate word processers. This isn't computer literacy. There isn't an interest there. Kids just aren't interested, since the information they learn is either already in their heads, or is too mundane to bother learning. Any child can figure out how to use a word processor on their own in a few minutes. It doesn't require a full semester of instruction.

The attitude the average child has towards technology today is very grim. Kids with computational interests are discouraged and frowned upon. "Nerds" and "Geeks". Outcasts. Loners. Why? Because the schools haven't done a good enough job of making the technology interesting. It may be fun to call ourselves the community of nerds, but trust me, It's no laughing matter when a child is being ridiculed and shunned in school because of this. The truth is, the only thing kids look forward to in computer class every day is playing video games. I saw it day after day in grade school and middle school. Less of it happens in high school, but it's still there.

One of the problems is that the schools are too busy baby sitting kids and telling them what they can and cant do in front of the computer. They're constantly monitored. They're told they can't chat. Or write email. Or go to this site, or that one. Internet filters are put up which scan by keyword. "http://www.hotmail.com" isn't accessible, since it contains the keyword "hot", which could lead to sexual oriented material. Signs are posted that warn the kids not to do anything frowned upon by the faculty.

As you can probably tell, this isn't the environment that kids learn in. They hate it. There's too many rules. There's no freedom. Therefore, they slowly drift away from the computer, putting it off as "boring" or "for nerds and loners". They don't have the initiative to do what they want.

As a result, most kids today are kept in a bubble that prevents them from learning more about the technology that drive their lives.

Schools need the funding and the expertise to implement technologies that will help the kids learn, not limit what they already know. Of course, nobody likes the idea of more taxes either, but the future is really in our hands. Write your congressman or senator and take a stand. They need to know where the money they raised is going. Children need freedom to do what they want. That's the most important thing about education.