Pc Should Augment Traditional Schooling Hit The ‘Escape’ Key Preserve The Human Factor.

Janie Smartapple graduated from high school in the year 2010. In her old age, she often thinks back fondly to her school days. She met her favorite computer in the ninth grade. It beeped in joy when Janie walked into the room.

Janie read in the history books that adults once had taught students. She couldn’t believe it. How inefficient! Parents who visited her classrooms talked of the old days when students performed science experiments with real materials. When they read from hardcover books. When they bonded with human teachers who opened up the love of learning.

The Janie Smartapple scenario is a silly one. Or is it? School officials nationally have fallen in love with computers. Many believe computers will accelerate learning, cure learning disabilities and prepare young people for the time when everything, and everyone, will be run by computers.

If you think computers are the answer to education’s ills, pick up the July issue of Atlantic Monthly. Writer Todd Oppenheimer points out some troubling trends. School districts are doing away with art, music and physical education to make room for computers. They are betting money and resources on computers when studies indicate that computers sometimes hinder, rather than help, students.

Oppenheimer writes: “A half dozen preliminary studies recently suggested that music and art classes may build the physical size of a child’s brain and its powers for subjects such as language, math, science and engineering - in one case, far more than computer work did.”

Computers have a place in schools. They are the future, and children should feel comfortable working on them. But they are merely an education tool, not the prime mover behind good learning. Education is a complex process. Children take in knowledge through all their senses. The touch of wood, glue, paper. The smells of science labs. The sounds of band class.

Computers are two-dimensional and cold. They cannot ever replace the magical relationship that develops among a teacher, student and a class.

School officials and parents should critically question any time they consider replacing live human beings - and classes such as art and music - with computers. Schools can buy great computers and, in the process, sacrifice the souls of their students.

, DataTimes MEMO: For opposing view, see “Computer savvy a vital necessity”

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