Educational Computing a Faustian Bargain?

Educator Lowell Monke expresses his considerable reservations about the oft-heard notion that computers are "jut another tool" to be used in educating young children.

If we look through that lens, I think we will see that educational computing is neither a revolution nor a passing fad, but a Faustian bargain. Children gain unprecedented power to control their external world, but at the cost of internal growth. During the two decades that I taught young people with and about digital technology, I came to realize that the power of computers can lead children into deadened, alienated, and manipulative relationships with the world, that children's increasingly pervasive use of computers jeopardizes their ability to belong fully to human and biological communities—ultimately jeopardizing the communities themselves.

The rest of Monke's article is at Orion Magazine. I'm still chewing on it. (Via Mind Hacks, my favorite non-library blog). Whatchy'all think?

Comments

[Tony]

Great article, thanx for putting it up.

It makes a certain amount of sense, the allure computer technology has on young minds, as well as the potential debilitation of social development it could bring about. After reading it, I think I agree with Monke, though I'd like to hear more about how he thinks children should integrate technology into their lives, given the pervasiveness of technology in the world in which we currently live.

Interestingly enough, this isn't the first of this kind of argument I've heard before. Check out the Star Wars novels! At the beginning of the New Jedi Order series, Jacen Solo and his younger brother Anakin have this fierce kind of debate going on--only it's use of the Force that's in debate, not computers. One feels that the Force is "just a tool" that Jedi Knights should use as they need, while the other thinks overuse of it sullies its purity.