Challenging Change

Failure to Connect
by Jane M. Healy, Ph.D.

(Page 3 of 3)

Rather than mindlessly accepting "change" as important and necessary for our children, we should begin by pausing and reflecting on the long-range personal and cultural implications of our new technologies. Neil Postman, who can always be counted on to raise probing questions about any form of mechanization, is profoundly skeptical of the American search for a "technological fix." He also objects to the overwhelming desire to fit our children for "success" in the marketplace. Schooling, he maintains, should not be so much about making a living as about making a life. His book Technopoly presents a strong case that change, per se, does not necessarily represent an advance.

"Stated in the most dramatic terms, the accusation can be made that the uncontrolled growth of technology destroys the vital sources of our humanity. It creates a culture without a moral foundation. It undermines certain mental processes and social relationships that make human life worth living." In addition to considering what technology can do, he suggests, we should also examine what it may undo."

At 10:30 one mellow Saturday night in October, 1996, I happened to be out walking on the upper east side of Manhattan. Few people were strolling at that hour, but I noticed one brightly lit store which contained a veritable bustle of activity. It was one of those all-hour work centers where computers, copying machines, FAX, and other timesaving appurtenances of modern office life are available for short-term use. There crowded at least two dozen sharp-looking twenty- or thirtysomethings, energetically going about their business as if it were 10:00 A.M. on a Monday morning.

As a parent and a grandparent, I find such experiences unsettling. Most of us love these electronic conveniences — but at 10:30 on Saturday night? Is this what we now call living? Is this the purpose for which we are educating our children — so they can work, work, work, until the work itself substitutes for life and becomes the central purpose of their days? Are we programming our children, and thereby turning them into analogues of the machines they so efficiently utilize?

Cello Lessons or Video Games?

Surveying expert opinion on the question of how computers will ultimately affect our children's lives yields a provocative range of ideas. Patricia Greenfield, a cultural psychologist at UCLA who specializes in analyzing tool use and art forms, points out that as a culture we increasingly esteem technological intelligence and devalue the social and emotional. Thus we expose our children to computer games, programmed learning software, and computer camps, all of which have children working with external symbols (pictures on a screen) rather than with internal ones (language, mental images). Although parents tend to be skeptical about video games, many overcome their concerns with the hope that their children are learning mental skills somehow valuable for the future. (Greenfield, in fact, terms these games the "training wheels for the computer age.") Many educators find this emphasis troubling. Linda Pogue, of York University in Toronto, observes, "This machine is so cognitive, we're forgetting the affective [emotional and social development]. I find children and university students too much in their heads — they're not experiencing life, they're thinking about life."

Software magnate Bill Gates paints a much rosier picture: "I think this is a wonderful time to be alive. There have never been so many opportunities to do things that were impossible before. It's also the best time ever to start new companies, advance sciences such as medicine that improve quality of life, and stay in touch with friends and relatives." Gates adds, however, "It's important that both the good and bad points of the technological advances be discussed broadly so that society as a whole, rather than just technologists, can guide their direction."

Douglas Rushkoff, author of Playing the Future, represents a new cadre of thinkers who are pushing hard on old value systems. He sees traditional educational priorities based on linear thought (as in written text, planning ahead, writing or reading music, or cause-and-effect reasoning), dying off in favor of the holistic flow of living in the moment. He thinks today's youngsters, whom he terms "screenagers," represent an evolutionary leap in human consciousness because they aren't bound by old-fashioned ideas of order but rather thrive in the state of chaos found on the Internet.

Physicist Fritjof Capra disagrees. He sees the information technologies as totalitarian, demanding ever more of our time and priorities, distorting people's relationships to the world and to each other, and eliminating alternative views of reality. Capra, a committed skeptic regarding children's computer use, believes we are far too worried about our youngsters' store of information; we should be more concerned with the kind of thinking, caring, aesthetically sensitive humans they are becoming. "Increasingly, all forms of culture are being subordinated to technology, and technological innovation, rather than the increase in human well-being, has become synonymous with progress," he asserts.

"We need a large technical class that is well trained to do work that is mind-numbingly boring," stated Eric Roberts of Stanford University's computer science program in commenting on an escalating demand for computer science majors with programming skills. While many programmers disagree, Roberts's remarks should at least make us pause to consider the future prospects of children propelled into toddler-to-teen technology.

As I watch solitary youngsters sitting at home mesmerized by their latest video game or software, I am reminded of Bill McKibben's observations in The Age of Missing Information, as he laments our children's separation from nature and real-life lessons such as patience and limits learned from interacting with the physical world. The global consciousness of an information society, he worries, is separating us from local, regional, and personal consciousness in which our actions have direct and observable effects on other living things. McKibben contends there is as much important "information" and a great deal more depth inherent in studying natural phenomena in real (snail-paced!) time than in cruising nature videos. For a child, reflectively examining a leaf or a pebble would be far more valuable than any published CD-ROM.

Philosophical arguments aside, what we really need to think about is how to prepare our children for life in an information-loaded but depersonalized landscape. Is it by connecting them to computers, or by spending comparable time on giving them an early grounding in humanity? As one thoughtful scientist and father mused, "Should I spend the money on cello lessons or video games?" Not enough people are asking these questions. I keep recalling Thoreau's warning that if we aren't careful, we could all become "tools of our tools."

Technology and Power

Throughout history, new technologies have altered the existing social order, economy, and power structure. "Technology" is any tool or medium that helps people accomplish tasks or produce products more efficiently, and computers are only the latest in a long line of innovations — going back to axes and fire — that have changed the way humans interact with the world and each other. Computers, like all technologies that introduce new information or alter the format of information, are changing the balance of power in schools. Increasingly, the "techies," rather than the educators, hold the power to make educational decisions.

"When these computers first came out, they were simple enough that any of us could deal with them. Now hardware and software have gotten so complicated, as they've added all this new gadgetry — most of which we don't even need — you have to have an 'expert' just to keep it running. I'm really disillusioned. The whole field is being taken over by techno-nerds — they know basically nothing about education but they're starting to run the show instead of the teachers," one teacher remarked bitterly.

"The whole movement has been driven by techies, the 'priests and priestesses,' from the beginning of mainframes, and now it's getting worse because everyone on campus is networked," agrees Al Rudnitsky, a technology enthusiast teaching a popular course on "Information, Technology, and Learning" at Smith College. "We can't manipulate our own equipment because we might mess up the whole system. Most troubling," he feels, "is that most teachers have no underlying conception of what they ought to be doing with these things. They are overwhelmed by their regular duties; they don't have enough time to prepare first-rate instructional programs for a whole new medium."

Educators are worried that education is becoming an adjunct to the technology business, a sort of training school for the high-tech world. We parents want to see our children succeed, but the foundations for true success — even future technology "guru" status — rest on skills that will not become obsolete with the changing of a microprocessor. Most successful technology innovators did not grow up with computers, but rather with rich, internal imaginations. Many were divergent thinkers who failed to flourish in the traditional world of school.

In ensuing chapters we will see how the adult-child balance of power may also change as a function of computerized learning. For now, let's introduce a final theme, which concerns the changes in mental skills that will inevitably accompany the increased use of so-called digital tools along with the erosion of abilities that could result from using too much of today's inferior software.

Changing Technology, Changing Brains

"Reading books is boring and it takes too long. Searching the Web is faster and more fun because we can get sound recordings, like of a dolphin's sounds, or a video of the discovery of the bow of the Titanic."

Eleven-year-old student, Glenview, Illinois

In addition to altering society, new technologies also have a disconcerting habit of changing the mental skills and even the brain organization of people using them. Historically, one of the most profound examples of this neurological reorganization accompanied the advent of language, which furthered the size and power of left-hemisphere systems for logical, analytical thought. More recently, scientists have observed that even differences between pictorial languages (one form of Japanese writing, for example) and alphabetic scripts of European languages cause physical alterations during brain development. Fast-paced, nonlinguistic, and visually distracting television may literally have changed children's minds, making sustained attention to verbal input, such as reading or listening, far less appealing than faster-paced visual stimuli. (This thesis is explored in depth in my book Endangered Minds.) One of my most pressing curiosities in writing this book has been how computer use will change the developing brain, and how we can maximize its positive effects without neglecting aptitudes we value, such as reading, reflection, original thought, or internally driven motivation and sustained analysis.

"BUT IT'S ONLY A TOOL..."

"It 's so cool to be an animator, and you can really mess with people's heads."

David J. Masher, Animator for "Carmen Sandiego"

In almost every conversation I have with either parents or educators about technology, this phrase arises: "But it's only a tool." This dismissal is, of course, a comforting demystification. Tools are subordinate to humans, like crayons or hammers. Surely, nothing to worry about so far as our kids' minds are concerned.

I disagree. Whatever your attitude toward computer technology, neither this machine itself, nor the software it uses, is only a tool. First, studies demonstrate that people react to and treat computers, no matter what their software, as more "human" than machine. Second, the minute we add software, we are subject to the objectives, knowledge base, interests, and the biases — recognized or not — of the programmers.

Even utilitarian, tool-like software, such as word-processing programs and computer-aided design, imposes subtle attitudes. For example, students using word-processing software instead of pencil and paper tend to be motivated to write more but may regard the printout as finished before it is carefully edited because the first draft already looks so neat. Teachers are confronting the need to reevaluate their customary criteria in grading papers when masses of information can be downloaded, complete with graphics, spruced up with elaborate formats and typefaces, and presented as the result of "research." The very availability of spell-check programs and calculators calls into question how much time to spend teaching "basic skills" such as spelling and arithmetic, as well as how actually to go about it. (More about all this later.) Drawing or designing by computer likewise changes the task demands — and the mental skills required — from doing the same work by hand, and may even alter our definitions of creativity.

Many of us who have struggled with "upgraded" versions of a familiar software package may agree with Clifford Stoll, a disillusioned pioneer of the Internet, who comments, "The computer requires almost no physical interaction or dexterity, beyond the ability to type... and demands rote memorization of nonobvious rules. You subjugate your own thinking patterns to those of the computer. Using this 'tool' alters our thinking processes." Pointing out that the handwritten note is qualitatively different from an e-mail greeting, Stoll also worries that by learning to depend on a computer when confronted with a problem, we will limit our ability to recognize other solutions, and ultimately degrade our own thinking powers.

Others, of course, are convinced the computer enhances our mental powers by enabling us to farm out low-level skills and mechanical operations and focus on the "big picture" reasoning which only humans can (thus far) do. Computerized interventions have repeatedly shown their value in helping the learning disabled and physically handicapped bypass difficulties and exercise their true intelligence. Yet as computer power and our dependence on it expands, this "tool" may be sliding ever so quietly into the driver's seat.

THE STATE OF CHILDREN'S SOFTWARE:
HARDLY A "TOOL" FOR LEARNING

Unfortunately, the state of most software "tools" for either entertainment or learning is disappointing at best and abysmal at worst. George Burns, director of computer use at the highly regarded Bank Street College of Education in New York City, is one of numerous thoughtful educators who believe that approximately 90 percent of current "educational" software is not worth buying. Currently, most is programmed by "techies" ("market droids" in the words of one Apple executive I spoke to) who have little if any knowledge — or interest — in child development or educational philosophy. Many are described in the trade as "classic computer nerds" who take their work very seriously but primarily enjoy seeing if they can make a program do something — for the pure excitement of making it work. Thus much "educational" software is crowded with extraneous and time-consuming effects that accomplish little beyond distracting children and distancing them from real learning. Moreover, many programmers are more interested in technical than human interfaces and are forced by speed-of-light production scheduling to subvert personal and social concerns to almost inhuman working hours. "Speed is God. And time is the devil," one computer executive stated recently as he exhorted his employees toward ever higher-speed product development.

Are these the values we want influencing and teaching our children? More responsible companies are employing educational consultants, but as has happened in television, their counsel may not be heeded when "bottom-line" issues are at stake. The market moves quickly, and when it does, most software firms will worry less about educational goals than amusing special effects.

In the next chapter we will look closely at some examples and consider how software decisions both reflect and influence our ideas about how children should be taught. I hope we will put to rest the notion that a computer is only a tool.

The Plan of This Book

To probe the effects of any technology on young people's minds, we should first understand the fundamental processes of mental growth and brain maturation. I have approached the topics in the following pages from my perspective as a developmental and educational psychologist, presenting important background information about ages and stages of cognitive development and what adults can do to optimize their children's mental growth. Thus, this book incorporates a practical guide on how to help children develop their minds right alongside the when, where, how, and why of using — or not using — technology to assist in the process.

I must also mention that, although I have been invited by several software developers to consult on products, I have no business association with or particular allegiance to anyone in the computer industry.

The book is divided into three parts. In the next two chapters we will visit the current scene in schools, homes, and home schools, review the basics of educational computing, and offer guidelines for technology choices. Part Two will treat with personal issues in technology use: physical health, intellectual and brain development, and the social, emotional, and other personal aspects of children and teens using computers. Part Three describes practical applications that illustrate appropriate and inappropriate ways to use new learning technologies with different age groups. Finally, I will tackle some observations about the future, which will inevitably present our young people with challenges not yet envisioned. With thought, planning, and our own good sense, we should be able to develop young minds that are able to deal not only with these challenges, but also with anything else that the digital revolution has up its hard drive.

Copyright ©l; 1998 by Jane M. Healy

About the Author

is an educational psychologist and teacher who has worked with students from preschool through graduate school. She consults and lectures worldwide, helping teachers and parents understand the educational implications of current brain research. She has appeared on national media such as the Today show, Nightline, Good Morning America, CNN, and NPR. A mother and grandmother, she currently lives in Vail, Colorado.