As this month’s issue of Kappan makes clear, technology in schools has always comprised a variety of tools and platforms, from architectural innovations to television broadcasts to the latest virtual simulations. But, for much of the latter half of the 20th century, a great deal of the discussion of ed tech focused on computers.
Grappling with the potential of CAI
Some of the earliest discussions of computers in Kappan focused on computer-assisted instruction (CAI), which was designed to enable large numbers of students to move through the curriculum at their own pace. And with that technology came, on the one hand, bold predictions that schools would never be the same and, on the other, efforts to tamp down such expectations. In January 1967, James Becker (“It can’t replace the teacher: Yet”) opted for the latter, arguing that while technology might help schools and teachers better educate students by, for example, allowing for some new kinds of individualized instruction, it was unrealistic to expect a swift and all-encompassing transformation of our schools:
It would be quite easy to offer some optimistic arguments about what education and the blending of technology will produce by, say, 1970 or 1980. One could start with the notion that computer-assisted instruction . . . will replace teachers and solve most of our educational problems. That such a pursuit has become a popular pastime can be best demonstrated by reviewing some of the current professional literature. But — panaceas do not work. Yes, the new technology has discovered that education is big and a rapidly changing business; no, the impact of technology on education will not be as rapid as many people suppose. Change in education is more apt to be evolutionary than revolutionary. (p. 237)
The April 1968 issue of Kappan included a special section on CAI, in which Patrick Suppes (“Computer technology and the future of education”) gave an overview of what CAI could do, as well as its benefits and limitations. Suppes argued that educators’ concerns about CAI — that it was too impersonal, would promote standardization and loss of individuality, and was too expensive — were serious, but he believed that the future predicted by naysayers was not inevitable. In fact, he explained, CAI, with its ability to provide instruction and practice at each student’s level, had potential to reduce standardization:
Contrary to the expectations sometimes expressed in the popular press, I would claim that one of the computer’s most important potentials is in making learning and teaching more personalized, rather than less so. Students will be subject to less regimentation and lockstepping, because computer systems will be able to offer highly individualized instruction. (p. 422)
But, in the same issue, Richard Barrett (“The computer mentality”) cautioned readers not to fall into the mindset of the tech advocates who assumed that their own enthusiasm would be shared by students over the long term, especially after being asked to interact with computers for hours upon hours over the course of their education. It would be far wiser to expect slow progress over time, which can add up to big changes:
If, by exerting the massive efforts now being undertaken with government support, we are able to improve the effectiveness of education by 3 percent per year for 25 years, it will then be more than twice as effective as it is today. This would be a revolution indeed, and to expect a single electronic tool to have the revolutionary impact predicted by the more enthusiastic supporters of the computer is to invite disappointment with more modest but truly significant improvements. (p. 433)
The dawn of the microcomputer
By the 1980s, it was clear that CAI had not, in fact, transformed schools. But when computers started becoming smaller and more affordable, they started capturing educators’ attention once again. In a January 1982 special section on “The computer age in education,” Linda Wyrick Winkle and Walter Mathews explained why, this time, the revolution had potential to stick when the last one did not. The first computer age, they explained, relied on large, costly technology that lacked user-friendly software. This time, however, computers were smaller, cheaper, and easier to use. It would be a mistake to ignore their potential:
As educators we cannot fault ourselves for letting the first computer revolution go by. It was not what pedagogy needed. But now our computer has arrived. The microcomputer is here, and with it has come a challenge to us to shape it into a universal learning tool — one that will help us achieve educational goals that today are only dreams. (p. 315)
In the same issue, Harold Shane (“The Silicon Age and education”) offered an in-depth look at what microprocessors could do and how they could transform society and schools. Once again, the hope was for an interactive machine that could provide individualized, multimedia content. Shane recognized , however, that progress might be slow, given budget cuts, policy battles, and lack of consensus over goals for computer use (and education itself).
The following year, in an October 1983 issue on computers, Shane offered an update (“The Silicon Age II: Living and learning in an information epoch”) in which he described how computers had brought a host of changes, both good and bad, to homes and workplaces. Notably (and remarkably, in the years before the internet), Shane had become concerned about the enormous amounts of information and the increasingly swift rates of change being wrought by technology. Society needed strategies to grapple with these changes, he explained, and schools should help students understand the many different ideas they’d likely encounter via technology:
As the microelectronic boom enhances the information explosion, I see no cause for “technophobia” in public school classrooms or on the college campus. However, we must recognize that in an information society the schools seem fated to find themselves no longer cloistered retreats but lively arenas in which an increasing array of conflicting social, economic, moral, and political ideas will collide. (p. 129)
As in other issues devoted to technology, authors in the October 1983 Kappan offered a variety of perspectives on the value of computers in education. For example, Decker Walker (“Reflections on the educational potential and limitations of microcomputers”) looked at seven ways computers can contribute to education and seven limitations. According to Walker, computers could provide more active, tailored, and individualized learning and reduce the amount of time students had to spend on “mental drudgery” (i.e., making calculations or typing new drafts of a paper), but they could not replace skilled teachers because although software was proliferating, its quality was uneven.
The software problem remained a concern into the mid-’80s, with multiple authors in the December 1984 issue (“Visions of the future in educational computing”) expressing consternation at the massive influx of low-quality software into the education market. Too much of it, said Alfred Bork (“Computers in education today — and some possible futures”) was text-based, noninteractive, disconnected from the curriculum, and difficult to use. Kenneth Komoski (“Educational computing: The burden of insuring quality”) took a deeper look at the problem, noting that the Educational Products Information Exchange, which sought to catalog and evaluate educational software, had found that more than half of education programs were not worth recommending, and only 5% were of truly high quality.
Regardless, it seemed clear by December 1984 that computers were here to stay, as Peter Wagschal explained:
Whether we schoolpeople like computers or not, whether the available software meets our high standards or not, and whether computers fit easily into our curricula or not, these machines are going to play a major role in our daily lives — just as commercial television now does. The fact that public school personnel found commercial television too banal to be of any interest pedagogically did not prevent the full-scale invasion of that medium into Americans’ daily lives. And the discomfort of school personnel with computers will be equally unlikely to halt the invasion of this new interactive electronic technology into our daily lives. (“A last chance for computers in the schools?” p. 253)
And the tech would continue to evolve, as demonstrated by Bruce Watson’s October 1990 story (“The wired classroom: American education goes on-line”) about classes using a bulletin board system (BBS) to communicate with peers around the world. The internet was starting to make its first steps into the classroom, giving educators yet another new technology, full of promises and perils, to manage. Now, we can only wonder, what’s next?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Teresa Preston
Teresa Preston is an editorial consultant and the former editor-in-chief of Phi Delta Kappan and director of publications for PDK International, Arlington, VA.
Visit their website at: https://prestoneditorial.com/
