Wired for Learning or for Solitaire?

Tools or toys? Do computers help children learn, or do they mostly just entertain? And where should they rank on a school’s priority list along with, say, smaller classes and watertight roofs?

Politicians have been beating a path to the Silicon Valley to pay homage to the high-tech god and to get on the priority list for campaign contributions. The Silicon Valley and other technological hubs around the state are helping to fuel California’s new economy--and are creating a new source of political money.

But the pols are motivated by more than special-interest backing. They’re also heeding the voters, following the flow. The public accepts computers as compulsory. And people are infatuated with PCs. There seems to be a societal video addiction, both to TV and PCs.

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) recently told me about coming upon her 2-year-old grandson with a baby blanket in one hand, a thumb in his mouth and the other thumb on a PC mouse.

“Computer screens and keyboards in the classroom are going to become what blackboards and chalk were in our day,” Boxer said. Last year, she pushed through federal legislation to provide tax deductions for companies that donate computers to public schools.

In Sacramento, Gov. Pete Wilson has launched a “digital high school initiative”--a four-year program to wire every campus so each student has access to a computer. The price tag is $1 billion, with the state paying half and the rest coming from local, federal or private sources--wherever a school district can dredge up the matching money.

This is the program’s first year. At least three dozen L.A. County schools already have gotten state checks.

“There’s a tendency in education to skip the current population and help the next,” says Joe Rodota, Wilson’s chief deputy and his computer guru. “What the governor likes about this is that we’re delivering something right now.”

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I’m not really a Luddite--one of those angry, early-1800s workers who protested against technological change--but I am a skeptic about the PC’s real value as a learning tool.

Many of us know kids who were computer whizzes as tots, but in high school they couldn’t do diddly. They knew how to surf cyberspace, but not how to learn. Their concentration lasted about as long as it took to click onto the next Web site. And their grades stunk.

These kids remind me of the guys in my day who took auto shop and learned how to fix a carburetor, but couldn’t pass the written driver’s test.

As we begin dipping into government treasuries for billions of tax dollars to buy classroom PCs, it seems to me we should be spending a lot more time thinking about how they’re going to be used. Also, just how do we balance computer costs against other education needs--like textbooks, music programs and functioning bathrooms?

It, therefore, was encouraging recently to find several parents and teachers who tended to agree. They were participating in Sacramento and L.A. focus groups sponsored by the Milken Exchange on Education Technology, which is trumpeting the use of school computers, gauging their public popularity and trying to find their best use.

Yes, one of the Milkens is Michael, the former junk-bond king who was convicted of securities fraud and spent 22 months in prison. Maybe he’s trying to rehabilitate his public image. Maybe he envisions someday making a killing off school computers. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

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These are some comments I heard at the focus groups:

“Computers are not the future. They’re here right now. If we want to prepare our kids, they’ve got to learn how to use them.”--a low-income mother.

“I’d rather see schools have more classrooms and more teachers.”--father of a high school student.

“If schools can’t come up with money to fix the roofs, how are they going to come up with money for this?”--father of a kindergartner.

“Putting computers in our school would be like putting a CD player in a ’72 Pinto.”--father of two middle schoolers.

“I walk into a computer class and half the kids are playing solitaire.”--a computer teacher.

Used correctly--which means being set up correctly by the political system--a computer can be both a tool and a toy. It also can be a source of knowledge. But it can’t tell a user how to use that knowledge. It’s no substitute for a good teacher and a clean, safe school.

And it never will be a substitute for a developed human brain. That development starts with the old-fashioned basics--reading and writing. Not video games.