They can apply to the other side of the Chinese crisis. But this mostly involves older students, who should have the maturity to navigate the uncertainties of the Internet and take advantage of sophisticated technology classes. These classes involve activities such as advanced scientific and mathematical modeling, or electronic projects, in which students make circuit boards and their own software programs. Unfortunately, classes of this sort are the great exception. Technology does not prepare students for their future jobs, it does the exact opposite. Schools need to limit their funding for technology, and use that limited funding for more sophisticated technology classes and other in-depth programs that are being neglected. Schools need to focus on teaching students real world skills and leave the technology training to companies, who can easily teach them how to use the newest technology as opposed to teaching them how to write and reason.
In Conclusion
Computers can, in select cases, be wonderfully useful in school. But over and over, high technology is steering students away from the messy, fundamental challenges of the real world, and toward the hurried neat convenience of an unreal virtual world. It is teaching them that exploring what's on a two-dimensional screen is more important than playing with real objects or sitting down to a conversation with a friend, a parent, or a teacher. It downplays the importance of listening carefully to people and of expressing oneself with acuity and individuality. And this leads all of us to sideline activities that have long helped children develop fundamental human capacities, which sustain society over the long haul. "Nobody knows how kids' internal wiring works," Clifford Stoll wrote, "but anyone who's directed away from social interactions has a head start on turning out weird . . .
No computer can teach what a walk through a pine forest feels like." Sensation has no substitute. Computers are damaging to children. Marilyn Benoit, the president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, spoke at the 1999 State of the World Forum about what she called "dot.com kids." Benoit was afraid that "children's constant exposure to rapid-fire stimuli to the brain" from the onslaught of digital media had contributed to the rise in hyperactivity disorders, their inability to handle frustration, and a general condition she termed childhood narcissism. One would reason that schools should be shrewd about their money, considering how little they have and how far they have to make it stretch. However, schools pour their money into the latest technology, and as they continue to do so our youth will continue to feel the effects. Our youth is the basis of our society because they are the ones that will decide the future. To ensure their healthy development, the trend of technology-based teaching must be ended. Technology is only a tool it is not the solution to our schools problems.
Technology is not bad. Like all of us, schools have fallen for the latest thing and made mistakes. They need to analyze these mistakes, learn from them, and work toward fixing the problem they have created. Schools must take the money from their technology budget and put it back were it belongs. Most of schools technology was bought using money that was originally being used by art, physical education, and other vocational classes or teachers and counselors salaries. This money needs to be put back into classes and teachers. The schools then need to use their trimmed technology budget more effectively. To solve the problem at hand the schools need to get away from the idea that quantity is better than quality. Buying more computers will not solve anything; schools are already filled with too many of them.
They must be used effectively in other manners besides shallow learning software like AR and other programs. Computers should be removed from the elementary level; they serve no purpose there, other than corrupting children's imaginations and abilities for abstract thought. Technology needs to be applied only in higher levels of education. Technology can be used effectively in high school classes like videography, computer assisted drafting, modeling, and networking and software programming. The education system has been too eager to invest in the newest solution that promises to do wonders. Education is one of society's most difficult, most complicated, and most troubled undertakings. One would think that its leaders might therefore approach incessant offerings of reform with an air of sobriety, and an appreciation for the long art of mastery.
But they continue to invest into the false promises of technology. This new technological age presents the crisis of its implication in the classroom. Is it a crisis of opportunity, or one of imminent danger? If not employed carefully I fear that it will be the later. The poet William Blake wrote, "You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough." Let us all hope that it is not much longer before that time comes, when technology's road of excess will have led our schools, and the rest of us, to a new place of wisdom.
