Computers Fundamentally Lacking

Computers have become standard in many classrooms in our schools. Pupils love them, for it is fun to push buttons and watch things happening on the screens. Teachers love them, for they need only walk around the room, without the difficult and exhausting task of teaching ideas, and with no homework to mark after dinner. School officials love them, for they can brag about how up-to-date their schools are. Parents love them, for they need not pester their children about doing homework, or helping them if need be.

If everybody loves the computers, what’s wrong with them? Well, for one thing, while the children are pushing buttons, they are not learning basic math or how to write a sentence. For another, the same computers and technology probably will not be in use when the same pupils are grown and leave school to make a living. The young people will then have two handicaps: one, they will not have the basic education that makes a person literate and adaptable; and two, they will have to learn how to use whatever technology will be in use at the time.

Meanwhile, our taxes have paid for expensive computers that will become obsolete.

This has happened before. Years ago, when TV was new, school officials thought that, installed in every classroom, they could be used for teaching classes in many schools at the same time and so reduce the need to hire teachers. But it did not work, because every youngster is different in many ways and the machines could not deal with those differences. So schools went back to using human teachers.

There is no substitute for human teachers in the classrooms, and those who do not know that fundamental truth, or choose to ignore it, must learn it all over again.