Reality Bytes

By Brian Jacob

In their recent book, Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform , two Stanford University education professors, David Tyack and Larry Cuban, discuss the impact of technology on American education. They point out that many technical inventions, such as radio, film, and television, all heralded as panaceas, never lived up to their billing. Under pressure from experts to accept these technological advances into their classrooms, teachers responded by ignoring or subverting them.

Tyack and Cuban argue that the computer revolution, despite its high promise, has suffered a similar fate in the classroom. Assessing the role of computer technology in public education, the authors conclude that computers play only a marginal role in regular instruction. They offer this epitaph, "Computers meet classroom; classroom wins."

This is a fitting description of our school's first experience with computers. I teach at a small, alternative school in East Harlem, N.Y., that was founded to serve low-achieving students, including students who were unsuccessful in traditional school environments. Last year, we received a grant that allowed us to purchase eight computers. The current educational literature suggests placing computers in the classroom rather than in a lab setting. It emphasizes that a computer is simply a tool, albeit a sophisticated one, and belongs in the classroom along with other learning tools, such as chalkboards, books, and VCRs. Proponents of the classroom approach worry that computers placed in a lab will become an end in themselves. They say the message will become lost in competition with the medium--in this case,...