The Cutting Edge: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : COMMENTARY : Lesson No. 1 on Educational Software: It Does Not Work

As the parent of two young boys, I can tell it’s the Christmas season by the commercials appearing on TV. I don’t mean the ones hawking Mighty Morphin Power Ranger toys, but the ones aimed at making me feel that if I don’t buy my second-grader a Pentium-grade PC with full multimedia capability and all the software needed to make learning fun and creative, I’ve doomed him forever to be a castaway of the technological future.

Fortunately, long exposure to the products being hawked has made me immune to the pitch. As my kids have grown, I’ve tried every variation of “learning” software, from Reader Rabbit and Mickey’s ABC’s to Math Blaster, Talking Books, Dinosaur Adventure and KidPix. As an expert, I am now prepared to reveal the computer industry’s dirty little secret:

This stuff is a scam.

The fact is, so-called educational software doesn’t teach kids anything they won’t learn better and faster from more engaging and durable low-tech sources, like books and playthings. It’s a distraction and a game for most children, which makes the computer an expensive toy. All the CD-ROM drives, soundboards, joysticks and multimedia gewgaws in the world can’t obscure the fact that children’s software playing out on a computer is about as interactive as a TV set airing, well, the Power Rangers.

A recent Wall Street Journal story quoted an expert estimating that 75% of all “learning software” is worthless. The only exception I would take to that statement is the figure. I would put it closer to 100%.

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In my experience, even the highest-rated software programs are essentially animated video games overlaying “instructional” programs of appalling shallowness. The reason isn’t hard to divine. The fancy video, sound and multimedia graphics consume so much of the CD’s capacity that they squeeze out the one thing that’s truly important: information. Of course, these programs are not all bad in the same way. Some are better than others. But without exception, every one is ludicrously inferior to a well-designed and illustrated book on the same subject.

Take Dinosaur Adventure, a highly-rated $30 “interactive” instructional program. We introduced it into the house when my oldest son was 5. By then he already knew the names of more dinosaurs than the program did. When its “interactive” book module (the pages seem to turn in 3-D!) informed him that some dinosaurs lived on land and some in the water, the look on his face said, “So what else is new?”

But that was about as deeply as Dinosaur Adventure delved into the mysteries of the Jurassic and Cretaceous. In no time flat, Andrew was back in his reading corner with “Dougal Dixon’s Dinosaurs” (160 pp., Boyds Mills Press, $17.95), a marvelous kid’s book whose hundreds of illustrations reflect the latest scientific knowledge, open on his lap.

The claims that marketers make for these programs remind me of how broadcasters used to try getting around restrictions on children’s programming by calling Flintstones reruns “educational” because they taught kids about prehistoric life. Nobody swallowed it then, so why do we accept essentially the same balderdash from the Microsofts and Broderbunds of this world?

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One might argue that software is constantly improving, and the current releases of the programs that have so disappointed me are now useful. I say bosh. The problem isn’t merely the software, it’s the very idea of allowing a child to sit in front of a beeping, singing, flashing machine and mistaking it for education.

But the computer industry has even sold the schools on this con game. Districts without the wherewithal to keep art teachers on the payroll are holding fund-raisers to buy the latest hardware and software.

There are several scary things about our educational establishment’s love affair with computers. One is that it’s likely to promote more skimping on basic skills. In grade school, our children need to learn how to conceptualize and execute a written essay, not how to morph the letters so they print out colored green in 14 point type, Century Gothic Bold. They need to learn the role of perspective and composition in drawing and to manipulate pencil and paintbrush, not how to drag and drop clip-art of Santa Claus onto a blank page.

Another danger is that children will use computers as a crutch. They won’t learn penmanship because it’s easier to deliver a printout for homework, and they won’t learn long division because a calculator function will always be at hand to crunch the numbers. However, unless they do the math manually, they’ll never learn the numerical relationships that will enable them to put a grown-up calculator through its paces.

Naturally, you won’t hear these caveats from the computer gurus or learning “experts.” You think Windows 95 was oversold? You should see the relentless cynicism with which family software is merchandised. It’s clear that the salesmen’s main targets are working mothers and fathers guilt-stricken at how little time they have for their kids at the end of the day and determined to make up for it by equipping their offspring with high-tech, no-sweat learning tools. What’s the “talking book” a substitute for, if not a talking parent?

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But the same parents might feel less confident about entrusting their children to the new electronic baby sitter if they spent more time running the programs themselves. Then they would discover that, contrary to the advertisements, they will not turn the kids into young Shakespeares or Picassos.

Why I don’t allow my children more free time on our computer is the subject of some debate in our house. But I have yet to see why it should play any major role in my kids’ education before they’re in high school. At first glance, I thought multimedia encyclopedias on CD-ROM looked pretty neat, until I recalled the way I used my 20-volume World Book when I was growing up: by choosing a volume and paging through at random, slouching in a corner of my room or lying in bed, carrying it down to the dinner table or sitting out under a tree, exploring history, literature by pure serendipity.

Today’s kids can do that, too, but a computer encyclopedia doesn’t come to them--they have to go to it. And when they get tired of staring at a video screen or their behinds get sore from sitting in the same position for 20 minutes, what then? They turn off the machine and the learning experience ends for the day.

Underlying this year’s yuletide marketing is the subliminal message that a kid who can’t understand computers will be left behind in the global marketplace. But if Bill Gates is honest about making the computer an indispensable appliance in every home, it will have to become easier to use, not harder. Most of us already use computers every day without knowing it. They’re installed in our microwave ovens, our telephones and our hand-held cameras; anyone who owns a late model car is driving around with three or four on board. That doesn’t mean we all need to know how to program in BASIC.

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The high-tech merchants would better serve society if they spent less time inundating us with buzzwords like “multimedia” and “interactive” and more on how to improve content. Until they do, the silent majority of parents like me who know how threadbare their products are will only grow.

What does “interactive” mean, anyway? It is, or should be, just another word for engaging a child’s imagination. Sit down with your kid and read him or her the scene in Tom Sawyer where Tom and Becky, lost in the cave and down to their last candle, unexpectedly run into Injun Joe. That wide-eyed look you see and the gasp you hear? That’s interactive.