Product Description
The United States spends $6.5 billion on educational technology (1998 – 99), yet children’s educational performance remains stagnant. The Child and the Machine shows how our rush to use computers has led to the most expensive and least helpful revolution in the history of education.Amazon.com Review
The number of computers in schools more than doubled during the 1990s, while government and corporate initiatives to wire schools for Net access has been agg… More >>
The Child and the Machine: How Computers Put Our Children’s Education at Risk
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We can presume this book’s intended audience is the legion of teachers and education bureaucrats who cringe every time they hear the phrase “computers in the classroom”.
Their biggest dilemma and their most justifiable concern are the expense of the hardware and the short-life of your typical PC. Educational dollars are finite and mistakes can be expensive. The big bonus though, is that as computers have become more powerful, they are at the same rate becoming cheaper.
Alison Armstrong and Charles Casement in their book make a fundamental mistake in their approach to the impact of computers on children’s education. They focus predominantly on the hardware and human interface issue. Surely the power and impact of IT is not all about the box that sit on our desks but instead it is the world of knowledge and the creative tools that brings value, pleasure and rewards to all of us.
Since this book must have been written for an audience of educators, academics and “concerned parents”, it sensibly provides us with a comprehensive set of footnotes and bibliography. Unfortunately, the index is useless. I thought I’d check out references to Yahoo! There are two, the second being on page 200. Nowhere is Yahoo mentioned on that page. Similarly references to Nicholas Negroponte. We found a couple of references to his “Being Digital” when reading the book, but the writers casually dismiss his ideas in a few lines . Whoever indexed their book should polish up their search tools since the index often leads us nowhere.
When you consider Yahoo searches are damned by the authors, and considered to be such a difficult and confusing task for a child, imagine how a serious reader of their book feels when references to Yahoo in their own index lead you astray.
[The writers] still see knowledge as a Cartesian world of library shelves and card index files. The new technology and its impact on education are not simple computer aided instruction tools or smartish auxiliary teachers. Instead, they offer a gateway into a whole new world. Cyberspace is all about a network of relationships; not a series of neatly catalogued and cross-referenced facts and figures.
The authors remind me of the guys who walked in front of the first steam locos waving a red flag. This time round its the youngsters who are driving the trains ( and designing and building them) , and its the parents and teachers who are cowering in fear of the new technology.
This book relies mainly on anecdotal accounts when developing their arguments about the dangers of computers in the classroom. There is very little objective statistics or fact-based research in this book. All this book succeeds in doing is reinforcing the prejudices of the anti-computer lobby. Its Canadian origins shine through with its none too subtle references to the tainted world of American commercialism.
To be more credible the writers could have broadened their field of research to the Scandinavians (particularly the Finnish) who are leaders in the application of IT in education.
Since the topic of this book deals with such an important area for all of us it is disappointing to see it treated in such a shallow and one-dimensional manner.
Rating: 1 / 5
This book makes a few good points– it isn’t a good idea to limit children’s learning to digital means and most computer equipment used by children is designed for adults which can be difficult at best.
However, the author provides the most petty evidence for these claims. Yes, carpal tunnel is a danger, but not for the school children in the book who use share a few computers for a few hours per week. More dangerous is the way neural pathways are formed to accommodate digital media rather than concrete items.
This book is also out of date as far as the Information Age progresses. It doesn’t take into account that many children have a unsupervised computer access, etc.
Not worth the money.
Rating: 2 / 5
Solid information backed by fact and thoughtful experience on what we should consider when our kids plunk themselves in front of a computer for hours on end. Doesn’t anyone play outside anymore without a coach or some adult in charge? I like that this book inspries parents to let kids be kids, to grow up healthy and intelligent from a multitude of experiences, including some with the computer.
Rating: 5 / 5
It is all too easy for those of us with serious concerns about the every-growing power of computers in our children’s lives to be shouted down with unreasining cries of ‘Luddite!’. Fortunately this book has now come along to strike back on our behalf. It is well-researched, well-argued, and written in simple, clear English, and the concerns raised by the authors about computer overuse mirror what I have witnessed happening in the classroom over the last decade. It’s comforting to know that I’m not just imagining it. I use and enjoy computers, both at home and in my work as a teacher, but they are only one tool among many. For me, perhaps the most interesting and important chapter was that on the role of the arts in education, and how this vital component was being squeezed of funding in order to provide more (in my view and the view of the authors, unnecessary) technology. Occasionally the authors go overboard in their criticisms of computer use, particularly in the chapter on knowledge, but they’re definitely going in the right direction and should be congratulated for opening up a reasoned dialogue on this question, which is surely one of the seminal issues of our times. Please read it.
Rating: 4 / 5
This is a timely appraisal of the role of computers in childhood education.The authors question the hype surrounding the use of computers by young children.Parents are pressured to put their children on the computer bandwagon with fears that they will be “left behind”.(It’s perfectly sane to be left behind collective delusion.)The authors are not anti-computer, but they put forward cogent reasons why young children are harmed by computers.A central point is that computers offer very limited experiences.They offer little more than rote learning and visual stimulation of dubious value.The young child needs a variety of experiences that the computer just cannot give, such as interaction with other people and with living, stimulating environments.Computers deny the development of the imagination, language skills, and experiences of relating.Child development is thus diminished by the computer.The authors also mention physical harm caused by computers, such as RSI, poor posture, back strain, “Sega thumb,” eye fatigue and headaches.Young children are more prone to these problems.This is a carefully researched book which wants to see the real needs of children met.It is a much needed antidote to current computer hype.
Rating: 5 / 5