Understanding the full educational impact of any computer-based curriculum necessarily involves matters well beyond the technical, and even well beyond the classroom. Many proposed computer curricula acknowledge the shortcomings of previous initiatives, yet make recommendations still addressing only technical questions. My frustration with such purported "advances" led me to the conviction that ongoing social dynamics in (and beyond) the classroom, long pre-dating the introduction of computers, are of crucial importance. No matter how painstaking the design of a computer-based curriculum, what actually happens when it reaches a given classroom will depend partly on what's already going on in that classroom. How the new technology gets swept up into its users' pursuit of their preexisting goalsÑin essence, the context of use, the effect of the social environment on educational computingÑis the subject of this article.

One of the most noticeable influences on schools these days is the increasing application of economic reasoning to their activities. Under pressure from many quarters to improve their "productivity," to yield a higher level of measurable student performance with little or no increase in funding, educational institutions are increasingly being run as businesses.

Such pressure to "produce" more efficiently is one of the many reasons for the influx of computers. Just as their use in the business world enables firms to produce more with fewer employees, it is hoped that computerizing the operations of the educational world will enable more learning to happen, especially individualized instruction, without hiring more teachers Unfortunately for this line of argument, tar from saving money, adding computers to the classroom commits the school to additional spending in the future (for software, equipment upgrades, maintenance, staff training, etc.), and actually increases teacher workload rather than reducing it. (Ronald Ragsdale cites several studies demonstrating the added burden on teachers on page 207 of his book Permissible Computing in Education)

Under pressure from many quarters to improve their "productivity," to yield a higher level of measurable student perfomance with little or no increase in funding, educational institutions are increasingly being run as businesses.

With teachers already pushed to the limit as schools "streamline" their operations, adding new responsibilities is practicable only if something else is dropped. Reducing class sizes would be a healthy solution, but that would mean spending more on teacher salaries, just the opposite of the economies computer advocates are promising. Some even suggest computer purchases should be funded by increasing class sizes further to save on salaries.

The argument from economic efficiency just doesn't hold. Other pedagogical innovations, like peer tutoring programs, produce better results more cheaply, without consuming resources from all sides as computers do. (Marc Tucker cites research to this effect in his article in Journal of Communication, vol. 35, no. 4.) Introducing computers to schools does offer some benefits, but saving money isn't one of them, and if they are introduced in a manner that presumes spending reductions, then some other necessity will inevitably be ousted, especially at a time when shrinking resources at all levels of government have made it extremely difficult for many school districts to keep up with overdue building maintenance, buy up-to-date textbooks, or even, in some cities, keep schools open for the requisite number of days each year.

But given that the computers are there, and the teachers are short on time (increasingly so, due to the computers and their effect on school budgets), the computers do get used. And exactly how are they used? Of the various kinds of instructional software available, one is notably more responsive to the pressures schools are under to boost their "efficiency" and the predictability of their "output": drill- and-practice programs. Such software allows precise control over, and tracking of, student activities. The activities themselves are arguably much impoverished, but the programs do train students to perform at known levels on multiple choice exams, thus satisfying the call for efficient and predictable output. A study by Michael Apple and Susan Jungck (chapter 6 of Apple's book Official Knowledge) shows how the day-to-day realities of teachers' lives leads a conscientious set of professionals to employ an utterly routinized and vapid computer curriculum, simply because it was already prepared (freeing them from having to write one) and kept the students busy (freeing the teacher to complete other tasks). Perversely, the least intellectually engaging instructional software can become the most attractive to teachersÑfor keeping students wholly occupied, in a known activity with few surprises to require the teacher's attention, for a predictable amount of timeÑbecause of work conditions brought about partly by the very reforms touted as freeing teachers to spend more time working with students individually. [For more on how teachers are affected see page 3.

From a technical point of view, the computer is just as amenable to running an open-ended simulation as a drill-and-practice program. But in the current social context you tend to see one a lot more than the other, because it's much easier to measure a student's performance on a standardized test than to verify that she has learned, for instance, to ask good questions.

One may also see a lot of computers sitting in schools without any well thought-out plan at all for what to do with them. This phenomenon is a result of pressure on school officials to do somethingÑanythingÑ about America's faltering economy, about Japanese and European competition, about students' job prospects, about the impending information age. The problem of how to appear to be doing something about these assorted crises is easily solved: buy some computers. The problem of how then to render the machines educationally useful is a good deal more challenging. Outcome: swarms of classroom computers without a clear mission. Expensive public relations insurance, paid for out of instructional funds.

Another way economic rationality is visible in the educational realm is in the treatment of schools as a source of profits. With several million microcomputers already in U.S. schools alone, educational institutions are, of course, a significant site for the sale for both hardware and software. But selling directly to schools is only one way to make money from them; another is to package access to their inhabitants as a product to sell someone else. Whittle Communications transmits Channel One into over 10,000 schools. The satellite-delivered news program, carrying paid advertisements, is notable for converting students themselves into a commodity, as Whittle sells its sponsors access to its captive audience. One can also generate profits via the schools by enlisting them to train students to be consumers of one's products, creating a future customer base. It is no coincidence that regional telephone companies are generously underwriting school purchases of computers at the very same time they are busily merging with cable television operators in preparation for offering new information services piped into our homes. For the new products to be profitable, someone has to buy them.

Pressure to add computers to the curriculum also stems from concern over how well schools are preparing students for the workplace. (I should note that views differ on how much schools should emphasize training in job skills; some might say the primary function of schools should instead be teaching students how to be active citizens, or passing on the collected knowledge of our predecessors, or establishing some sense of community in a nation of many cultures. But concerns over job skills are prominent at present.) Many claims about how schools "need" to change begin with discussions of how the workplace has changed recently. There is much talk about the "post-Fordist" mode of production, and "flexible manufacturing systems." In the new economy, the story goes, firms must be adaptable, opportunistic, quick to respond to constantly changing circumstances, "lean and mean," all of which implies considerable dependence on information technologies to track both external conditions and the firm's operations. And the new firm needs a new worker: rather than being a cog in the machine, she must exercise responsibility, recognize what needs to be done and do it, solve problems creatively.

Accordingly a new education is called for: to thrive in a work environment involving continual shifting to new tasks, students will need to become self-motivated learners, prepared to keep acquiring new skills their whole lives; they'll need to be adept at "critical thinking"; and most of all, they'll need proficiency with the high-tech equipment that will typify their work environment.

So what's wrong with this story? For one thing, it blames schools for problems they can't solve. It is simply not the case that the failure of the schools to provide enough of this new kind of worker is what's constraining the economy. Even if every graduate matched the profile of the post-Fordist worker perfectly, there still wouldn't be post-Fordist jobs for them. Although the occupations with the greatest rate of growth are in prime, high-tech fields, the actual number of such jobs being created is quite modest, as the high percentage increases are from a small initial base. The bulk of the growth will be in far less attractive fields. The Bureau of Labor Statistics now projects that the occupation in which the most new jobs will be created over the next decade is salesperson, followed by nurse, cashier, general office clerk, truck driver, waiter/waitress, nursing aide, janitor, and food preparation worker (chart in The New York Times, March 12, 1994, p. A7). Even though nurses are relatively well-paid, the median wage across all these occupations is approximately $14,500, and new entrants are likely to start well below the median. Furthermore, full-time, permanent jobs are in short supply, even in these fields; ominously, the temp agency Manpower has recently become the largest employer in the country.

Clearly, what the post-Fordist labor market presents is not a ravenous demand for as many self- motivated, multiply skilled, critically thinking young people as can be supplied, but a split demand, for a few such fortunates, and a much larger population shunted into marginal and temporary work, at best. The "flexibility" in flexible manufacturing includes payroll flexibility, wherein the employer adds and drops workers immediately as they're needed. Moreover, even for those working consistently, and in highly technologized environments, high-tech schooling is largely irrelevant. Productivity on the job is essentially unrelated to what happens in school, and the skills needed are overwhelmingly acquired in the workplace (see Randall Collins' book The Credential Society, chapters I and 2).

The impending Information Age is nonetheless a convincing pretext for initiating major educational change. Despite the irrelevance of curricular content to job performance, the rhetoric of high-tech schooling for a high-tech economy has lent effective support to various reforms, including the installation of computers in schools. One reason the rhetoric has been so effective is that parents are legitimately worried about the job prospects of their children. No matter what the data say, common opinion has it that computer skills will be an increasingly necessary job qualification, and no one wants to be left behind. Groups whose participation in the mainstream economy is already marginal fear being totally closed out if their schools don't keep up. And groups which historically had no trouble securing more lucrative positions are finding it more difficult. What was once virtually automatic, for instance, upon receiving a college degree, is now not so easy to obtain. With wider distribution of educational credentials, and shrinking opportunities, the same credentials no longer buy what they once did; the historically privileged need a new way to pass on their advantage.

If such an effort at "redifferentiation" is, in fact, a significant element of computer adoption by schools, one would expect parental pressure to be a visible factor. That's exactly what Marc Tucker reports in the article cited above. In his experience, the initial push for computers in schools came not from educators but from upper-middle class parents. The pressure was also backed up with money: in one year during the major build-up, funds raised by suburban parents paid for fully 27% of all computers bought for U.S. schools.

These actions can be seen as a response to credentials inflation. Although curricular changes have little to do with on-the-job performance, new technologies of production do enable the creation of new forms of "cultural currency" (borrowing from Randall Collins again). The older credentials have become badly inflated: everyone has them and they no longer guarantee a cushy sinecure. The formerly privileged react by creating a new credential. Initially, of course, no one has it, so the first few to acquire it are now distinguished from the crowd that has inflated the old credentials, and stand to benefit substantially. Once the computer credential catches on, a mad rush for it is likely to follow, yielding exponential growth in school computersÑprecisely what ensued throughout the 1980s (with the numbers doubling approximately every 14 months). But not everyone is in a strong enough position to obtain access to the new credential. The computer-intensive classroom is a very expensive innovation, out of reach for the many communities that cannot afford it (or lack the clout to force their school officials to find a way to afford it).

What I hope these arguments have suggested is that educational computing has unfortunately been technology-driven rather than curriculum-driven; i.e., an attitude of "this technology exists, we've got to have it" has been the predominant motivating force, rather than starting with a determination of what we want schooling to accomplish, and then examining how computers might be used to achieve those goals. Without such reflection, putting computers in schools is likely to mean we just get more of the same, only automated now. And for the most vulnerable members of our society, already getting a raw deal in school, that's very bad news.

In the absence of a more mindful approach, students from different backgrounds are given different experiences with computers, tending to perpetuate existing inequalities. Girls, children of color, poorer kids, and students labeled "low-ability" are disproportionately engaged with drill-and-practice software, "mastery" learning of decontextualized basic skills, and vocational training in the use of specific software, while boys, white children, middle-class kids, and students labeled "high-ability" are disproportionately involved with open-ended simulations, integrated applications, and programming (data in Henry Jay Becker's newsletters from the Center for Social Organization of Schools, Johns Hopkins University). The differentiation process that once reserved certain privileges for wealthy white men through, for instance, college attendance, may be breaking down due to demographic and economic changes, but it may also be reestablished through preferential provision of computer-based education. Some students will learn how to direct the new technology while others will learnÑif they can afford any exposure at allÑhow to be directed by it.

While I am asserting a tendency for social disparities to be reproduced, I am not claiming that is necessarily an intended result. It may not be that privileged groups push for introduction of certain kinds of computer education specifically in order to distance themselves from other groups. That may be the furthest thing from their minds when they lobby for computer purchases; perhaps a benign initiative is colonized by the dynamics of a preexisting social structure, telling us nothing about why the computers are first introduced. But that is exactly my pointÑregardless of why they are introduced into the educational setting, computers become part of the preexisting social dynamic of that setting. And the effect of their presence, their impact, depends on how they may be swept up into ongoing conflicts. If you drop an artifact like the computer into a setting where some people are more powerful than others, it should come as no surprise that unless specific measures are taken to assure otherwise, the computer ends up perpetuating the advantage of the more powerful, for they are most able to reap the benefits of its presence.

Hank Bromley is currently completing his PhD in Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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