Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds -- and What We Can Do About It

Chapter One: Blundering Into the Future: Hype and Hope

"Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living."

Nicholas Negroponte

"Computers? The more the better. I want my kids to be prepared for the real world out there."

Suburban father, Atlanta, Georgia

"Technology! I feel as if we're being swept down this enormous river -- we don't know where we're going, or why, but we're caught in the current. I think we should stop and take a look before it's too late."

Assistant Superintendent of Schools, Long Island, New York

Technology shapes the growing mind. The younger the mind, the more malleable it is. The younger the technology, the more unproven it is. We enthusiastically expose our youngsters to new digital teachers and playmates, but we also express concern about the development of their brains, bodies, and spirits. Shouldn't we consider carefully the potential -- and irrevocable -- effects of this new electronic interface with childhood?

Today's children are the subjects of a vast and optimistic experiment. It is well financed and enthusiastically supported by major corporations, the public at large, and government officials around the world. If it is successful, our youngsters' minds and lives will be enriched, society will benefit, and education will be permanently changed for the better. But there is no proof -- or even convincing evidence -- that it will work.

The experiment, of course, involves getting kids "on computers" at school and at home in hopes that technology will improve the quality of learning and prepare our young for the future. But will it? Are the new technologies a magic bullet aimed straight at success and power? Or are we simply grasping at a technocentric "quick fix" for a multitude of problems we have failed to address?

In preparing to write this book I spent hundreds of hours in classrooms, labs, and homes, watching kids using new technologies, picking the brains of leaders in the field, and researching both off- and on-line. As a longtime enthusiast for and user of educational computing, I found this journey sometimes shocking, often disheartening, and occasionally inspiring. While some very exciting and potentially valuable things are happening between children and computers, we are currently spending far too much money with too little thought. It is past time to pause, reflect, and ask some probing questions.

This book will present a firsthand survey of the educational computing scene, raising core issues that should be addressed before we commit to computer- assisted education. We will consider technology use in light of brain development, stages and styles of learning, emotional-social development, and successful educational practice in school and at home. We will examine questions such as:

• When and how should children start using computers, and should they have them at home?
  
• How can parents and teachers support children's learning with technology?
  
• What kind of software applications and educational technology uses are best at different ages?
  
• Which ones may be harmful, and why?
  
• How do we balance education and entertainment?
  
• How should we deal with health concerns related to computer use?
  
• Will computers make human beings smarter -- or will they erode important forms of thought? How will interacting with artificial brains influence our ideas about what constitutes "intelligence"?
  
• What effect will technologies have on children's creativity and their emotional, personal, and social development?
  
• Will, or should, emerging technologies change our concept of education?
  
• If schools are adopting computer technology, which priorities are most important?
  

And...the most important question of all: How can we best help the young prepare for a changing and unpredictable future?

Belief vs. Fact

"In sum, if computers make a difference, it has yet to show up in achievement."

Samuel G. Sava, Executive Director, National Association of Elementary School Principals, in a 1997 speech

"The research is set up in a way to find benefits that aren't really there. Most knowledgeable people agree that most of the research isn't valid....Essentially, it's just worthless."

Edward Miller, Former Editor, Harvard Education Letter

Exaggerated Hopes and Unmet Promises

Why do we so desperately need to believe in computers? After surveying current attitudes for the nonprofit organization Learning in the Real World, William Ruckeyser told me, "The nearest thing I can draw a parallel to is a theological discussion. There's so much an element of faith here that demanding evidence is almost a sign of heresy." Witness the federal government's initiative to wire all schools for telecommunications by the year 2000, under the simplistic assumption that connecting kids to "information" will somehow make them more able to read and use it intelligently. Meanwhile, library and sometimes even school budgets are cut across the nation.

Eighty percent of people who plan to buy a personal computer soon will cite children's education as the main reason. Ninety percent of voters in the United States are convinced that schools with computers can do a better job of education, and 61 percent would support a federal tax increase to speed the introduction of technology into the schools. In 1995 the American Association of School Administrators published the results of a survey that asked parents, teachers, leaders from various fields, and members of the general public what skills would be important for students graduating in the twenty-first century. "Computer skills and media technology" ranked third in a list of sixteen possibilities, outvoted only by "basic skills" (reading, writing, and math) and "good work habits." Computer skills were deemed more important than "values" (e.g., honesty, tolerance) by every group but the leaders. "Good citizenship" and "curiosity and love of learning" were considerably farther down the list, and such topics as "knowledge of history and geography" and "classic works (e.g., Shakespeare, Plato)" were near the bottom (highly valued by only 29 and 21 percent of business leaders, respectively).

An atmosphere of hysteria surrounds the rush to connect even preschoolers to electronic brains. Of the ten bestselling children's CD-ROM titles sold in 1996, four are marketed for children beginning at age three. Computer programs are advertised for children as young as eighteen months. In the United States, computer users under the age of six owned an average of six software titles in 1996, a number increasing every year. Parents and educators in Europe and Japan are astonished as well as amused by this push toward electronic precocity.

It is less amusing to realize that research to be cited throughout this book demonstrates how computer "learning" for young children is far less brain-building than even such simple activities as spontaneous play or playing board games with an adult or older child. "Connecting" alone has yet to demonstrate academic value, and some of the most popular "educational" software may even be damaging to creativity, attention, and motivation. In 1995, a seminar of knowledgeable academics concluded that computers have no place at all in the lives of young children. In 1997, Samuel Sava, head of the National Association of Elementary School Principals, told school leaders that computers have done little to improve student achievement and questioned the nation's spending up to $20 billion a year to fill schools with computers.

Even for older children and teens, research has yet to confirm substantial benefits from most computer-related learning products at school or at home. Analyzing home computer use, Julian Sefton-Green and David Buckingham from the University of London found "not much to be excited about." They learned that parents tended to greatly overestimate the power of computer hardware to help their youngsters' learning and "secure their educational future." A major problem was that few knew how to support their child's use of the technology and allowed children unlimited and unsupervised computer use. Most were not worried about kids having open access to the Internet. The one thing parents did fear was too much time with computer games; some of the youngsters had incorporated schemes by which they could quickly punch some keys to substitute a page of text when a parent walked through the room.

Although Sefton-Green and Buckingham began the study expecting to find highly imaginative and stimulating computer use, they discovered that youngsters used the computer mainly for solitary "messing around," with little creative or academic outcome. "The sheer availability of home computers did not itself make children use them for educational purposes," they conclude. Moreover, "It has been assumed that the computer will simply facilitate children's 'natural' imagination by somehow bypassing the need for them to develop technical skills....Yet if anything we have found the reverse to be true....Indeed, we suspect that the idea of a 'naturally' computer-literate child is more of a social construct than an empirical reality." These authors conclude that children and teens need close adult mentoring and well-defined educational projects to make their technology use constructive.

Needed: Accountability and Common Sense

In an era when mechanistic and scientific remedies are sought more often than humanistic or personal ones, such faith that technology can accomplish what mere mortals have failed to do is not surprising. Currently, school districts are lining up to spend scarce education dollars on equipment that stands a good chance of being outdated in two or three years. These funds, as well as the considerable space needed for the computers, are often drawn from more developmentally important areas such as physical education, art, music, drama, traditional library resources, and textbook purchases. Much of the glitzy new machinery is either misused or underused once it arrives at school; not only do machines sit idle because of lack of technical support or teacher preparation, but poor implementation of software turns learning time into trivial game-playing.

We lack both substantive research and guidelines on how to use new technology in the most constructive way for children -- or, in fact, for learners of any age. Pressing issues of developmental readiness for computer use have barely been explored. What is right for a fourteen-year-old may not be right -- and may be outright damaging -- for a four-year-old. Questions about emotional, social, personal, and health hazards have barely been asked, much less answered.

The few studies showing positive results for educational technology have been largely funded by computer corporations or conducted by educators who are (or would like to become) consultants for the technology business. Even glowing anecdotal reports from classrooms often turn out to have been written by "teacher-techies" who are bucking for jobs in the industry. In the next chapter we will review the major studies, but the fact is that we still await objective validation of benefits from educational computing.

Nevertheless, beyond naive excitement there are still exciting prospects. Not all learning is easily measured, and the majority of educational computer use to date has been poorly managed and badly executed. Throughout this book you will find both positive and negative examples. I believe success is possible, but it is not automatic, inexpensive, or attained without a great deal of thought and effort.

If you are a parent, a teacher, or a citizen interested in the upcoming generation, you need to consider these questions seriously. This technology is expensive not only in terms of money but also in the use of developmental time -- that precious interval when brain, body, and spirit are still at their most formative stages. We need a critical and objective analysis and clear, practical guidelines for classroom and home.

From Techno-Pusher to Critic: A Journey of Puzzlement

My own experience with educational computing is typical of those of many educators who have reluctantly moved from bedazzled advocacy to troubled skepticism. It is also instructive in several respects, not the least of which is shaking up some simplistic pedagogical assumptions.

Certainly, it has been a long and interesting odyssey since my initial honeymoon with machine intelligence back in 1979. Fired with enthusiasm from using computers in graduate work, I wangled funding to buy the first Apple computer for the elementary school of which I was then principal. For an educational psychologist eternally fascinated by questions about why and how children learn, the potential of this left-hemisphere extension (some might say contraction) of the human brain was irresistible. Soon a dedicated tenderfoot programmer in Applesoft Basic, I was even willing to forgive the machine's choleric disposition and struggled excitedly on while it superciliously spat out its favorite phrase: "syntax error." (Those were the days when a "user-friendly" machine would have been spurned by aspiring "digerati.") I was eager to observe firsthand the computer's potential with kids, so I selected a half-dozen of our best fourth-grade math students for an "enrichment" mini-course.

Since accessible educational software had yet to be invented, our project was to learn how to write a simple program. "Learn" is the operative word here, for teacher and students were about equally innocent. Nevertheless, to my great pride (which, as you know, always goes before a fall!) we finally managed after ten class sessions to make the computer display a simple multiplication problem and ask for a reply; the user would then type in an answer and receive either a congratulatory message ("Good job!") or a prompt ("Try again.").

I was ecstatic and, I'm afraid, a bit obnoxious in touting the potential of this amazing gadget. The students appeared to enjoy the exercise, or possibly they welcomed a change from their classroom routines, but I believed they were learning important skills of logic and sequencing ("if/then" statements, for example), if not a great deal of math. In fact, I immodestly concluded that this was probably close to a perfect lesson with teacher and students exploring and learning together -- while having a lot of fun. I was well on my way as a born-again techie.

Years later, with only some of my original enthusiasm dimmed, I returned to the same district as a visitor observing technology use and sat down in the high-school computer lab to do some word processing. By chance, the young lady at the machine next to me was one of those original fourth-graders, now a charming junior, who greeted me cheerfully.

"Well, Charmayne!" I beamed. "What an amazing coincidence! Here we are together in the computer lab, and I'm sure you remember that your very first computer experience was with me!"

Charmayne smiled, politely, but blankly. "I'm sorry, Dr....

Though most parents of school-age and even preschool children believe that computers are essential to learning, the truth, according to Jane Healy, is that more important educational priorities are being pushed aside in the rush to buy computers and computer related products.
Once a bedazzled enthusiast of educational computing, now a troubled sceptic, Healy spent hundreds of hours talking to school administrators, teachers, parents, and students to provide this balanced and thoughtful evaluation of computers in the school and at home. In FAILURE TO CONNECT, she examines the benefits and drawbacks of computer use for children, arguing that time spent on computers is often time stolen from other developmentally important activities such as reading and creative play. Healy also suggests that most schools overlook the most critical technology component: adequate teacher training.
FAILURE TO CONNECT also explores the effects computers have on children's health, brain development, creativity and their social and emotional needs. Based on years of research, FAILURE TO CONNECT is a timely and eye-opening examination of the central questions we must confront as technology increasingly influences the way we educate our children.