COMPUTER REVOLUTION

...They have brought with them an array of promises...

...Furthermore, computers help bosses keep tabs on their workers...

...Nor do they tend to press their school boards to buy computers...

...There are very few jobs at the end of the computer tunnel," says Joan Greenbaum, a professor of data processing and economics at LaGuardia Community College in New York...

...The Federal Government and the state and local governments may be keeping their money in their wallets and away from computers in education because they suspect there really may be no great need for a computer-literate workforce...

...Children go through their drilland-practice paces in grammar, spelling, and arithmetic—learning lessons, perhaps, but thinking little...

...Computers can empower workers and not just bosses...

...Companies dealing in microcomputers have turned to aggressive marketing techniques to capture an expanding market— expanding because of the heady computer promises and in spite of current parsimony among school boards...

...Kraft sees a growing polarization within the computer industry between a small group of designers and analysts servicing corporate managers, and a huge low-level group of coders and applications programmers...

...One can predict," wrote Patrick Suppes of Stanford University in a classic essay heralding the wonders of educational computers in the late 1960s, "that in a few years millions of schoolchildren will have access to what Philip of Macedon's son Alexander enjoyed as a royal prerogative: the personal services of a tutor as well-informed and responsive as Aristotle...

...It is a notion that appeals to innovation-minded educators and bosses and to the corporations that would like to sell them computers...

...High-technology corporations such as Control Data, Texas Instruments, and Apple Computer have hopped on the educational bandwagon, selling computers to schools as well as developing course programs, usually very dull ones...

...Makers claim application generators are used to streamline and simplify programming, to reduce human errors, and to eliminate time-consuming, dull programming chores...

...According to Kraft, the author of Programmers and Managers, a study of how programming is de-skilled, the computer industry wants to reduce its need for programmers...

...Teachers, if they hold onto their jobs, are reduced to computer attendants...

...The sad case of drill-and-practice computer programs and the rosier one of LOGO bear out the old saying: Computers are only as good as the people who program them...

...But "computer-related occupations" can mean anything from creative jobs designing number-crunching supercomputers for the likes of Control Data or Cray Research to grinding away listlessly on word processors or computer terminals...

...Designing for idiots is the highest expression of the engineering art," says David Noble, author of America by Design...

...Private computer schools and camps are also springing up and attracting attention and money...

...The U.S...

...A lot of promises have proved disappointing...

...Work done with computers, especially such standardized tasks as word and purchase-order processing, can be easily measured and calculated by computers...

...Apple hopes that once its computers are in the classrooms, schools will be hooked: They will order more of them, teachers will take to Apple course programs, and students will persuade their parents to buy Apple personal computers...

...In return, Apple wants a $20 million tax break from the Federal Government...

...Now it is playing a more cautious game...

...That inequality in computer knowledge will simply exaggerate the current inequality in wealth, for it is mostly the rich who will know their way around the world of the computer...

...Parents of modest means, who may be less enthusiastic about computers if they use them for dull tasks at work, are in any case priced out of the personal computer market...

...We see for ourselves a role of bringing the developer and the educator-user together...

...People whose work is narrowly defined by technology, such as medical technicians, find themselves stuck in specialized ghettos with no chance for advancement...

...The contradictions between the promise and reality of computers in schools pale next to the parallel contradictions brewing in the workplace...

...But the social use of a technology should not be confused with its nature or potential...

...For example, there were only 20,000 new programming jobs between 1979 and 1980—a drop in the bucket...

...The general thrust of the technology initiative," explains Frank Withrow, acting director of the division of educational technology at the U.S...

...And that says more about the uses to which businesses put computers than about the nature of the technology...

...California's Jerry Brown wants to augment the three Rs with the three Cs—"computing, calculating, and communications through technology...

...The abstract is made concrete, as Papert likes to say...

...Heavy on video graphics and simulations, LOGO can be used by a student to construct a symbolic world and then to learn how that world can be manipulated...

...Well-off, highly motivated parents are already buying personal computers for their homes and putting pressure on local school boards to invest in classroom models...

...Not only is computer technology decreasing the number of jobs and reducing wages, it is isolating jobs," says Greenbaum, whose book, In the Name of Efficiency, examines how employers de-skill jobs...

...Cheaper labor is substituted for expensive labor and capital is substituted for both...

...The strategy sets workers against one another as they strive to perform at or above the average pace, a standard that increases with the competition...

...smart new teaching methods, fulfilling jobs for graduates, better living for all...

...Word processors are "idiot-proofed" with the same goal in mind...

...Most of the current programs for computer-assisted education are rooted in simplistic stimulus-response learning principles...

...The worker could just as well be an illiterate, since the machine does all the work...

...And computer literacy will help people get good jobs and, ultimately, stay afloat in the new computerized society...

...For Toffler and Time, and even for those with a more tempered enthusiasm for the so-called computer age, computer literacy will make science fiction a reality not only in education but in work as well...

...Word processors are used to "de-skill" jobs, allowing employers to pay lower wages to fewer and lower-skilled workers...

...The company has offered to donate one of its Apple II personal computers to each of 80,000 public schools in the country, a $200 million give-away...

...It's a tedious business, something only a computer could love...

...Widespread computer literacy can lead to communities of competent people, important sources of resistance to the overweening demands of corporate greed...

...Now, many of them just have pictures of the items on the keys instead...

...It does convey a notion that there is a kind of skill to be learned just as we need the skill to read and write...

...The word processors increase productivity, the rave among efficiency experts these days, by reducing human error and the time a typist needs to prepare a text...

...It's a mixture of computer-assisted education and computer literacy programming...

...The consequence, in Kraft's view, will be a technological elite that designs computers and programs the managerial elite wants—even though millions of young people will be brought up with computers in schools, expecting to find a bountiful supply of high-paying, creative computer jobs waiting for them when they enter the job market...

...Education Department applauds the grass-roots effort to bring computers into schools and fails to notice that only the rich are participating...

...Contrary to popular belief, there is no great, overriding need for a computer-literate workforce...

...If classrooms and teachers do go the way of the dinosaur, it will not be with help from the Federal Government...

...Computer literacy is a real skill and goes a long way toward demystifying the new machines...

...Although President Reagan has addressed himself perfunctorily to the economic and military risks of a computer-illiterate America, and Secretary of Education Terrel Bell announced a "technology initiative" in June, the Federal money chest has remained shut...

...By pushing a few buttons, a supervisor can compare the performances of different employees and fire those working at a pace too far below1 the average...

...The grass-roots movement of the rich may produce enough computer literates for a technological elite...

...There was a time when it was true," she admits...

...Even the much-coveted computer programming job has fallen prey to de-skilling...

...The real thrust will probably have to come in the private sector...

...The imperative is to make ordinary citizens and workers technologically competent...

...The economy cannot accommodate all the college graduates at the door, and now it will probably not have slots for many computer-literate workers either...

...Tad Pinkerton senses a trend toward "education for sale...

...But progress will probably come only to wealthy schools serving wealthy communities—those that can afford the technology...

...Computing in general and software in particular aren't exempt from the laws of capitalism...

...Computers, whether used for routine or innovation, will no doubt make headway in the schools without the Federal Government's help...

...Instead of questioning the value of monotonous instructional methods, school boards and administrators prefer to replace troublesome, high-salaried teachers with machines that know only routine...

...For years, the "revolution" boiled down to something known as computer-assisted education...

...Only the machine has to be intelligent...

...Although Apple has a sponsor for its bill and dozens of supporters in Congress, the Federal budget deficit and election-year considerations may frustrate its efforts...

...A few small companies have made a big business out of designing "application generators," machines that perform standard programming procedures...

...Pa-pert's guiding principle, following Piaget, is that "children learn by doing and by thinking about what they do...

...They used to have the name of the item on the keys, so the worker didn't even have to know the prices of the items...

...Papert and his colleagues at MIT have developed a computer language, LOGO, that shows great potential for education, especially at the elementary school level...

...The programs represent traditional curriculum ideas, only in a mechanized form...

...They can help individuals assert control over production through access to the knowledge upon which modern production rests...

...Based on the theory of children's cognitive development put forth by the late Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, LOGO lets the student be a programmer, commanding the computer in virtually any way he or she wants...

...There are a lot of contradictions in computers, education, and work," Greenbaum says, "and we're sitting right on top of them...

...Both the Heritage Foundation and Human Events magazine, advocates of the back-to-the-basics movement, have taken the Reagan Administration to task for the technology initiative complaining that a brave new world of national computerized education may be just around the corner...

...Computers have arrived in many schools—more than half now use them in teaching, according to a recent nationwide survey...

...they already have more than a toehold...

...Not all the computer programs devised so far are boring or based on worn-out educational ideas, however...

...The incentives for schools and government aren't...

...Where public money has been slow to come, these parents, with an eye to their children's computerized futures, have organized fund-raising efforts to purchase the technology for the schools anyway...

...The intent of the complexity is to make them simple to operate...

...But, it's a bad phrase because it presumes that once you learn this new skill there will be whole new worlds open to you...

...In most instances, the computers are little more than electronic flashcards or "expensive pageturners mimicking programmed instruction texts," as Anthony Oettinger put it in his critical book, Run, Computer, Run, written in the late 1960s at the height of the enthusiasm—and funding—for computer-assisted education...

...Sure, there's been a mini-explosion of software specialists, but it will burn out," he says...

...Furthermore, the Reagan Administration insists that public education is a local and state responsibility, not a Federal one...

...These conventional programs don't teach computer skills or literacy, and if they teach anything about computers at all it is only a certain competence with the keyboard...

...And small wonder...

...The shortage of programmers has been the corporations' rationale to standardize jobs and get more control over the programmers...

...But teachers, only too pleased to shunt boring responsibilities on to machines, have appreciatively accepted these programs...

...They automatically calculate the sale and its tax as well as make change...

...Control Data got things rolling in 1962 with its PLATO system, a large mainframe computer which schools could plug into with a terminal and telephone...

...Computer literacy is both a good and bad phrase," says Phil Kraft, a sociologist at the Binghamton campus of the State University of New York...

...None of this is meant to belittle the drive for computer literacy...

...Maybe 20,000 or 30,000 a year, which isn't many, and there will be lots of competition for them...

...They can get the bottom-of-the-barrel teenagers—dropouts, functional illiterates...

...Only recently has computer literacy stepped into the limelight...

...There won't be [the] jobs that have been promised...

...The wave of the future has an undertow to come, however...

...All the skill is embodied in the machines...

...It's true that the business community is crying out for a highly skilled computer work force...

...While the computer may not be the royal road to knowledge, it is an important road—one which must not be restricted and controlled by profit-minded corporations and educators enamored of routine...

...Computer-assisted education itself de-skills teaching...

...The greatest disappointment may be yet Ross Corson is an editorial intern at The Progressive...

...For more than a quarter of a century, the rhetorical trumpets of business, government, journalism, and bargain-basement sociology have all been heralding a computer revolution in America...

...In industry's view," he says, "programmers cost too much, are unreliable, too independent, and go their own way too often...

...most demand nothing more than keyboard competence...

...The potential for a computer revolution in schools is certainly there," he says...

...The fact is, most "computer-related" jobs do not require computer literacy...

...The much-heard complaint from computer companies that programmers are in critically short supply is a falsehood, according to Greenbaum...

...The people who expect computers to open up new worlds do not take into account the severely limited— even degrading—ways computers are used in education and work...

...The computer revolution may promise a nation of whiz kids, but the reality is likely to be a society of computer literates and illiterates— the haves and have-nots of the new age...

...Society needs computer-literate citizens, the argument goes, because the economy increasingly depends on the new technology...

...Apple Computer tops the field when it comes to sales tactics...

...Still, contradictions abound: The great to-do over computer literacy and educational technology flies in the face of the reality of computer use in the school and workplace...

...Microcomputers now cost about one-fifth as much per student as centralized time-sharing systems like PLATO, making them attractive to budget-conscious school boards...

...Department of Education, "is information sharing, warehouse activities providing information on what's available and where it can be obtained...

...Still, while donated computers may induce rich school districts to invest in computer education, they won't do much for poorer districts, except possibly make them envious of those that can afford the technology...

...It is no coincidence that McDonald's has campaigned for a two-tiered minimumwage law, according to Kraft...

...Whether computers can ever become revolutionary educational tools is still anybody's guess, though Papert claims LOGO could make the teacher, the classroom, and organized instruction obsolete...

...There have been a lot of computer-assisted instructional programs that have failed miserably," concludes Tad Pinker-ton, director of the University of Wisconsin's Computer Center...

...A job becomes a job, not a career...

...But for today's students, the jobs will not be there—at least not in any great number...

...Even this meager role disturbs some of the Reagan Administration's ambivalent New Right allies...

...It's a tall order, and naturally enough the media hype has focused on the promises of the new technology and shrugged off the disappointments that have inevitably resulted—both in education and in work...

...The manufacturers of personal computers, of course, raise their voices in favor of computer literacy to sell their products...

...For three decades, access to higher education has broadened dramatically, while the number of appropriate jobs for well-educated workers has not...

...The question of equal access to computer education reflects a deeper problem: Schools depend on local property taxes for most of their operating revenue, so in large part the wealth of a community determines the wealth of its schools...

...While the costs of computers and accompanying software have come down, they are still not within the reach of the financially strapped schools that have a hard enough time paying for adequate non-computerized classrooms...

...In essence, the computer programs the student...

...They are freed from the tedium, even though students find themselves tied to machines that never tire of routine...

...In the age of microcomputers, however, Control Data is playing catch-up ball...

...Ignorance of the uses to which computers are put, especially on the job, is what keeps the fire for computer literacy burning...

...While computer literacy generally connotes a command of programming skills, computer-assisted education involves the use of the computer as a teaching machine, usually to perform tasks once exclusively the teacher's...

...Computer designers want it that way...

...All the talk about computer literacy, especially among educators and parents, arises from the popular belief that computer skills are fast becoming a person's working capital, an express elevator replacing the career ladder...

...Computer-assisted education is automation, not innovation...

...The inevitable resentment must be channeled into appropriate action...

...Computer designers make very complicated machines," adds sociologist Kraft...

...That is a difficult lesson for some educators and computer enthusiasts to keep in mind today...

...They sure have an incentive: the profit motive...

...They don't want their computers to be seen as just another consumer good, a variation on the video game...

...The enthusiastic campaign for computer literacy rests on a false economic assumption...

...The prophecies for the teaching machines look rather silly in retrospect...

...But both Apple Computer and Texas Instruments have been turning out programs based on LOGO, and a number of other companies are developing more...

...Labor and Commerce Departments as well as such companies as IBM predict that by the end of the decade 50 to 75 per cent of the jobs in the American economy will involve computers...

...They are joined by educators who seek to transfer teaching responsibilities from people to machines...

...The U.S...

...Career ladders are removed, so a person is stuck in his job...

...The revolution has been painfully slow in coming, and many supporters, including the Federal Government, have lost faith in the cause...

...There will be a crisis in the labor market and education as we see more technological unemployment and more low-wage jobs...

...He describes the computerized cash registers at McDonald's fast-food restaurants: Each is essentially a pre-programmed computer terminal...

...it may offer the public a view of the technology's potential, against which the frequently exploitive character of its present use can be understood...

...Computers are here to stay...

...For almost as long, they have promised a technological revolution in the schools, one that would change the nature of learning and the organization of education...

...Computer companies say they have to use the generators to save hard-to-find programmers for the most vital tasks, but what they don't so readily say is that the generators also reduce their need for programmers...

...Computer operators, for example, seldom become computer programmers and, likewise, programmers do not advance to systems analysis or design...

...The keys don't even have numbers on them any more, like a regular cash register," Kraft says...

...Unfortunately, in his technological zeal, Suppes did not recall that Aristotle himself told Alexander that there is no royal road to knowledge...

...So far, LOGO has been used mainly on an experimental basis...

...Washington poured millions of dollars into computer-assisted education research during the 1960s and early 1970s and got its fingers burned...

...Even the cooking of French fries there is done automatically...

...The most sophisticated of these machines can automatically scan a text to correct spelling and grammatical errors, eliminating the need for highly literate, meticulous typists...

...Most of what has been done up to now under the name of 'educational technology' or 'computers in education,' " MIT's Seymour Papert wrote in his recent Mind-storms: Computers, Children, and Powerful Ideas, "is still at the stage of the linear mix of old instructional methods with new technologies...

...Indeed, many programmers strive to achieve the excitement of Pac Man, Missile Command, and other video games and to make computers engaging as both objects and instruments of study...

...And granted, the computer field is growing faster than other fields, but from a much smaller base...

...Considering how computers are used in so many instances to degrade both labor and learning, we should be able to see the obstacles blocking the computer road to knowledge...