Uninstalling the Way to a Better Education

Greetings

After a crazy year of college and various other pursuits, I return yet again to make another post on my webblog. I am always curious as to why I always return to blogging after extended periods of inactivity. My best guess is that I love to write and that I love to stimulate the minds of all who come across my path. And so, for my grand return, I present the following essay (nearly fifteen pages in length) that I wrote for one of my Humanities courses at Grove City College. This research paper details how the overuse of computers for educational uses in today's classrooms has proven to be detrimental to American schooling. I hope that you will read this paper and respond with your views on the topic. I include a bibliography for the reader to validate sources or to explore for further reading. Without further ado, I publish:

uninstalling the way to a better education:

how extensive computer use in school has proved to be detrimental to american schooling

“Pupils may have a favorite teacher, they will never have a favorite computer.”

~Leonard A. Muller

In the midst of the Information Age in the United States, one would be hard-pressed to find a square-inch of land not wireless-Internet accessible or a household devoid of a personal computer. Truly, computers and the Internet have permeated essentially every facet of American life from libraries and government agencies to households and workplaces. One institution equally influenced by computers has been the American school. Like other cultural institutions, schools have been eager to integrate computers into daily instruction. Unfortunately, this rush to install Internet-ready computers into every classroom has caused many Americans to leave one important question unasked: Should schools so hastily endorse computer-based learning without considering its potentially harmful consequences? Author Neil Postman claims that “every technology – from an IQ test to an automobile to a television set to a computer – is a product of a particular economic and political context and carries with it a program, an agenda, and a philosophy that may or may not be life-enhancing and that therefore requires scrutiny, criticism, and control.”[1] If indeed Postman is correct, it is important to consider the philosophy or agenda of the computer, and its prospective destructive impact on American schools. Computer use inherently endorses a purely utilitarian purpose of education, attempts to dethrone the teacher from the leader of instructional activities, makes learning an isolated experience, endeavors to make learning purely efficient and enjoyable, and offers virtually infinite amounts of indiscriminate information at the touch of a button and, thus, the large-scale, unexamined use of computers is detrimental to American schooling.

Schooling For More Than Economic Purposes

Making computers a focal point in schools implies that the purpose of schooling is about the transfer of information for the goal of producing persons able to work in the industrial world. Proponents of large-scale computer use in schools claim that computers ought to be a focal point of instruction because of their prevalence in the “real-world,” especially in today’s workplaces. Concerning the importance of moving American schools into the Information Age, former IBM CEO Louis Gerstner, Jr. claims “we need to recognize that our public schools are low-tech institutions in a high-tech society.”[2] As such, if students are to succeed in their future occupations, then they must develop marketable computer skills. As stated in the 1983 government report A Nation at Risk, “Learning is the indispensable investment required for success in the ‘information age’ we are entering;” but their motive: “If only to keep and improve on the slim competitive edge we still retain in world markets.”[3] Clearly, this emphasis on the development of profitable skills demonstrates a narrow purpose of schooling, focused primarily on job training. Postman, decrying the current trend of increased use of computers in schooling, asks, “What do we believe education is for? The answers are discouraging, and one of them can be inferred from any television commercial urging the young lady to stay in school. The commercial will either imply or state explicitly that education will help the persevering student to get a good job. And that’s it.”[4] In short, the emphasis on developing marketable skills in students has made the purpose of school only the production of workers for the sake of a healthy economy.

By making schooling about the creation of technicians, large-scale computer use challenges the concept of schooling that focuses on the development of the whole person. Author Jacques Ellul, writing about the dangers of a school system so focused on industry, says “The new pedagogical methods correspond exactly to the role assigned to education in modern technical society….According to this conception, education no longer has a humanist end or any value in itself; it has only one goal, to create technicians.”[5] This “role assigned to education” is the production of pupils able to run the machines of the future, namely computers. According to Ellul, modern technical society has rejected the traditional idea of schooling of developing and molding the whole person–mind, body, and soul–and not merely the résumé. Referencing scientist Louis Couffignal, Ellul laments that for the new technical-driven school, “the human brain must be made to conform to the much more advanced brain of the machine. And education will no longer be an unpredictable and exciting adventure in human enlightenment, but an exercise in conformity and an apprenticeship to whatever gadgetry is useful in the technical world.”[6] Truly, the Information Age in schooling, with its emphasis on manufacturing students with money-making skills in the form of computer training, has ignored a student’s emotional, moral, spiritual, and overall intellectual development, and has instead proclaimed that “money is the principle thing; culture, art, spirit, morality are jokes and are not to be taken seriously.”[7] According to contemporary school reformers, since moral, spiritual, emotional, and social skills do not turn a profit, there is no need to teach these uneconomic skills; what matters is that computers make money, so students must learn how to use computers effectively if they, too, are to make money. Clearly, the emphasis of computer use opposes the traditional view of schooling that aims to teach civic and moral responsibility.

By endorsing a primarily economic purpose to schooling, large-scale computer use cripples the age-old schooling purpose of teaching students to become complete citizens and humans. In fact, school administrators believe so fervently in the computer’s ability to deliver such grand economic progress that they have willingly sacrificed various other school and cultural functions such as having smaller class sizes, renovating decaying buildings, providing arts programs in elementary schools as well as offering full-day preschool and kindergarten in order to make room for expensive computer technology.[8] Indeed, the computer craze in schools has caused many schools and classrooms to abandon the original purposes of school: that of creating a civilized and responsible person. Author Larry Cuban adds, “Popular as it has been among parents and policymakers, this economic justification for schooling…has overwhelmed the civic and moral purposes for schooling children and youth that dominated throughout most of U.S. history.”[9] Cuban also claimed that for about two centuries, Americans had expected that its schools would “build citizens” and “cultivate the moral and social development of individual students.”[10] Today, through our narrow-sighted lens of the Economy, we declare that these civic and moral aims are bunk, and that the purpose of schooling is to boost the economy through the large-scale use of the computer. This is truly a sad state for American society in that it suggests “the United States is not a culture, but merely an economy, which is the last refuge of an exhausted philosophy of education.”[11] In order to preserve American culture and enrich the learning in schools, Postman argues that since today’s schools possess “no moral, social, or intellectual center,” that “perhaps the most important contribution schools can make to education of our youth is to give them a sense of coherence in their studies, a sense of purpose, meaning, and interconnectedness in what they learn.”[12] If teaching students to become complete humans – intellectually, socially, and morally – is to be a valued aim of American schooling, then we must rid ourselves of the utilitarian purpose of schooling endorsed by computers in the classroom and rather seek to provide a purpose for education that is centered on the total development of the person.

Teacher-Centered, Not Object-Centered, Schooling

One of the most important consequences of large-scale computer use in American schools has been its attempt to displace the teacher from the center of classroom activities. According to proponents of widespread computer use in schools, “The student assumes a central role as the active architect of his or her own knowledge and skills, rather than passively absorbing information proffered by the teacher.”[13] In fact, the student is not merely an architect, but a “technonaut,” actively seeking out answers in the infinite glory that is the Internet, just as an astronaut discovers information about the universe.[14] The overall effect is that the computer dislodges teachers from the center of classroom instruction, forcing them to take different roles in schooling. These new roles include coach, facilitator, and mentor – virtually anything than mere “conduits of factual information readily available from other sources.”[15] In fact, some supporters of extensive computer use believe that computers will eventually make teaching a virtually nonexistent profession by enabling a few “star teachers” to work nationally in educating every American student.[16] Evidently, the traditional idea of the teacher-centered classroom is invalid and the way of the future is to enable computers to individualize student learning and to assist students in discovering their own truth. However, computers, unable to execute the complex tasks already performed by teachers, are completely inadequate in replacing teachers at the center of instruction.

Waving the banner of student-centered learning, advocates of large-scale computer use in schools have wrongly displaced teachers from the center of the classroom and have replaced them with machines incapable of providing an adequate education to its students. Rightly defined, one ought not to call computer-based instruction “student-centered schooling”, but computer- or “object-based schooling,” since it is not the student who is at the center of the instruction, but the computer, a mere object. One problem with object-centered schooling is that both computer and student are ignorant of what the student needs to learn. For example, while it is obvious that students do not enter school knowing that he requires understanding of the major concepts of Geometry and English Literature, the computer, too, has no way of truly knowing what students need to learn. The computer does not teach to the needs of the individual student because industries outside of education have largely been responsible for determining the content of educational computer programs.[17] In short, people who have spent little time teaching students in a classroom are the ones making decisions about what students ought to know, not teachers. This is precisely the reason many teachers refuse to endorse object-based instruction.

Since computers offer no way of tailoring quality instruction to individual students, teachers have largely given up on object-centered instruction and have returned to the teacher-centered instruction model. Teachers have been increasingly open to “low technologies” (chalkboards, textbooks, etc.) because they allow the teacher, not the computer, to control the learning. With a computer, the teacher, who knows the student intellectually and extra-intellectually (socially, morally, etc.), has no control over the content or presentation of the classroom material.[18] In fact, teachers have been more likely to adopt “low technologies” because they have been “simple, durable, flexible, and responsive to teacher-defined problems in meeting the demands of daily instruction.”[19] Diagnostic tests that “individualize” student learning simply do not compare to the attention a teacher offers everyday in the teacher-centered classroom. Take writing composition for example. A teacher is much better equipped to help a student write better composition than a computer. Author Wendell Berry writes “But a computer, I am told, offers a kind of help you can’t get from other humans; a computer will help you write faster, easier and more,” but counters “Do I, then, want to writer faster, easier, and more? No. My standards are not speed, ease and quantity…I would like to be a better writer, and for that I need help from other humans, not a machine.”[20] Not only do teachers offer better quality instruction intellectually, but they also are more able to teach the whole student, rather than only his intelligence.

Simply because teachers are human and not mere machines, they are more able to handle the complex needs of the student. If schooling is to become about the development of not only technical skills but also of developing the complex moral and civic responsibilities of the student, then humans (in the form of teachers), not computers, are clearly the only ones capable of adequately performing this important function. Discussing the complex role of the teacher in the classroom, Cuban writes,

Teachers at all levels have to manage groups in a classroom while creating individual personal relationships; they have to cover academic content while cultivating depth of understanding in each student; they have to socialize students to abide by certain community values, while nurturing creative and independent thought. These complex classroom tasks, unlike anything software developers, policymakers and administrators have to face, require careful expenditure of a teacher’s time and energy.[21]

Plainly, computers do not have the capacity to perform such complex tasks. Computers are machines; they do not possess the ability to have compassion for a student’s overall development as a human being nor do they have the power to reflect the community’s values that the student ought to imitate. Thus, by shifting the computer to center stage in today’s classrooms (and demoting the teacher in the process), supporters of computer-based learning devalue schooling.

Off The Information Island: Restoring Gregariousness

By ousting the teacher from the center of classroom learning, the computer also endorses an isolated view of learning whereby students interact with a computer to learn rather than with both teacher and classmates. Large-scale computer use in the classroom attempts to create an individualized learning experience for the student where the student navigates and creates his own learning “rather than passively absorbing information proffered by the teacher.”[22] Large-scale computer use, then, creates a situation that places students at individual computer stations interacting with a computer and completing assignments given by the teacher.

A problem with this situation (aside from the obvious classroom management issues that will ensue) is that students are not able to practice and develop the social skills required to be a civilized human being while they are interacting individually with a computer. Computer programmer and author Clifford Stoll begs the question: “Just why is electronic interactivity good for scholarship? With a computer, you’re interacting with something, not someone…Come to think of it, aren’t teachers interactive? It’s hard to think of a classroom without interaction.”[23] Computer use, by eliminating the traditional teacher-centered classroom, has retarded the development of oral and social skills best taught orally by the teacher. According to Postman, “Orality stresses group learning, cooperation, and a sense of social responsibility,”[24] all important characteristics of a refined individual. As proponents of widespread educational computer use push the teacher out of the center of the classroom, it becomes clear that the individualized instruction offered by computers only depersonalizes our students.

Large-scale computer use in schools adds to the depersonalization of an already depersonalized society. According to former Hewitt Packard chairman and president Lewis E. Platt, “Technology has made our society a little less personal, and this trend will only increase as more and more interactions move into the electronic world,” and laments, “But as the Internet becomes more pervasive…it runs the risk of making our world worse, instead of better.”[25] In fact, Stoll believes that computers and the Internet have already made our world worse. First, psychologists have discovered that Internet use has caused an increase in depression by about one percent for every hour spent online per-week.[26] This is important to note because the additive nature of computer usage often removes its users, including students, from more communal activities.[27] Second, even if only for economic reasons, Stoll claims that employers today hardly ever dismiss their employees for insufficient computer skills but for their inadequate social skills, where Stoll blames the computer which “dulls those essential abilities.”[28] Third, object-based schooling robs teachers of the joy of teaching students. Stoll remarks, “I’ll bet the best teachers are in it for the feedback: the smile on the kid’s face and the ‘Aha’ from the chemistry student. These, of course, are the very things that technology removes.”[29] Extensive computer use in schools only exacerbates the depersonalization problem of our Internet-savvy society while refusing teachers the ability to instruct students how to become complete persons.

Producing students less able to deal socially with others is to fail to produce complete, well-rounded citizens. The best way to produce socially inept students is to give them each a computer, re-label students “technonauts,”[30] and allow them to learn in their own individual way. Postman, describing the greater purpose of the teacher-centered classroom, says,

This is why it won’t do for children to learn in ‘settings of their own choosing.’ That is also why schools require children to be in a certain place at a certain time and follow certain rules, like raising their hands when they wish to speak, not talking when others are talking, not chewing gum, not leaving until the bell rings, exhibiting patience towards slower learners, etc. This process is called making civilized people.[31]

The very nature of the teacher-centered classroom where the teacher instructs a classroom-full of students at once promotes sociability among students. It is only then that schooling can attempt “to tame the ego, to connect the individual to others, [and] to demonstrate the value and necessity of group cohesion.”[32] If schooling is to be about more than the development of marketable computer skills, then schools must restore the gregarious facet of education by uninstalling computers in the classroom and reinstalling teachers at the center of instruction.

Learning Is Not Always Fun, Easy, or Efficient

By delivering lightning-quick results with flashy graphics to watered-down questions, large-scale computer use endorses the idea that learning ought to always be fun, fast, and easy. One of the primary reasons computers are so prevalent in today’s society is that they are tools that more efficiently and more easily accomplish tasks than if one were to complete an identical task without a computer. Moreover, as the quantity and type of features within computer programs increases, one is often more and more amazed at the wonder of the modern computer. Computers are fun; one often uses computers not only for productivity purposes, but as an entertainment source as well. They provide users with information in the blink of an eye and the dancing colors on the screen are certainly pleasing to the senses. Since the computer inherently operates on the principles of ease, speed, and excitement, it is easy to observe how students using a computer in school to complete an academic assignment would expect the learning to be easy, fast, and fun.

However, learning is not, and has never been, always about making learning easier, more efficient, and more enjoyable. According to Stoll, the problem with computer use in the classroom is that computers offer “shortcuts to higher grades and painless learning.”[33] The recent trend of prevalent computer use in schools has caused students to recognize that learning should always be easy, fun, and efficient but never challenging, dull, nor requiring perseverance. But Stoll argues, “Most learning isn’t fun. Learning takes work. Discipline. Commitment both from teacher and student. Responsibility – you have to do your homework. There’s no shortcut to a quality education.”[34] Truly, if students are to become capable citizens, there exist topics that simply require hard work and determination, like spelling, reading, and multiplication. Stoll adds, “Sad to say, learning to multiply isn’t a feel-good project…Rather, learning the times tables requires rote drill work. It’s not fun, like shooting down Martians on a computer screen. But it’s one of those must-learn-or-else lessons, without which you’re eliminated from many fields of the human endeavor.”[35] In addition, the rewards of performing well on a computer-based program are often given in material terms: a fancy graphic appears on the screen congratulating the student, an A grade from the teacher, 15-minutes of “game-time” on the computer. However, if students are ever to become truly motivated to learn in and out of school (which ought to be a goal among educators), then teachers must help students realize that the benefits of learning are not for “an adrenaline rush, but a deep satisfaction arriving weeks, months, or years later.”[36] This may not be something teachers will be able to achieve in the short time they have with their students, but basing classroom instruction on computers will certainly make students less dependant on extrinsic motivators and potentially, in the future, more willing to accept the challenge to learn without incessantly falling into the temptations of ease, speed, and entertainment.

Quality, Not Quantity, Of Information

Since computers are non-discriminatory in the ways in which they disseminate information, and hence focus on the quantity, not quality, of information, large-scale computer use in schools makes students solely in charge of differentiating valuable information from insignificant information. According to promoters of educational computer use, a computer is “One of the most important teaching tools ever developed,” in that it possesses “the potential of bringing the entire body of world knowledge into the classroom in a variety of formats at the touch of a button.”[37] There is no doubt that Internet-ready computers have the ability to access a virtually infinite amount of information. However, one must consider if transporting the whole universe of information to a student’s computer portal is a valid aim. Obviously, if students are to learn about a given topic, they ought to learn the best things about that topic, not merely more things about the topic. A student possessing massive amounts of information about a given subject may be able to impress others on a quiz show, but he may completely miss the pieces of information that make it important to his education. For example, a student may be able to explain multiple facts about the family (say, that it provides food and shelter and that it traditionally consists of a husband and wife and their children) but completely miss the essential fact that a family is also a source of love, comfort, and support. In addition, widespread computer use in schools requires students overwhelmed with information to perform the role already carried out by teachers and curriculum, that of “organizing, limiting, and discriminating among available sources of information.”[38] This is a dangerous task to appoint to the ignorant student equipped with an Internet-ready computer because there is no way to ensure the student will discriminate correctly; that is, it is impossible to predict if the student will choose the best information that will enable him to develop into a complete person. The information-focused curriculum advocated by supporters of widespread computer use in schooling has the definite potential to create humans incapable of distinguishing between important and trivial (or even harmful) information.

Despite claims from computer advocates that extensive computer use in schools enhances a student’s ability to think critically and develop greater problem-solving skills, computer use actually discourages higher-level thinking. Advocates of large-scale computer use argue that by removing the teacher from the center of instruction, students are now, with the assistance of a handy computer, able to develop better problem-solving strategies and higher-order thinking skills.[39] However, according to Postman, computer-based schooling “vaults information-access [skills] to the top.”[40] Rather than develop higher-order thinking skills in students, a computer entertains students, and its use further encourages the trivialization of knowledge and understanding. Stoll argues, “These teaching machines direct students away from reading, away from writing, away from scholarship. They dull questioning minds with graphical games where quick answers take the place of understanding, and the trivial is promoted as educational.”[41] Computer use does not promote the practice of the sustained thought so integral to the performance of higher-order thinking. Echoing these words, Stoll challenges extensive computer use proponents to “Show [him] a computer program that encourages quiet reflection.”[42] Indeed, it would be very difficult (if not impossible) to find such a computer program because sustained thought is not fun, not easy, nor is it efficient. Since computers discourage the development of higher-order thinking skills and instead place the improvement of information-access skills at the pinnacle of learning, large-scale computer use proves to be detrimental to schooling.

Back to Basics

By endorsing a purely economic philosophy of schooling, removing the teacher from the center of instruction, isolating students in learning, striving to make learning fun, easy, and efficient, and overwhelming students with immeasurable amounts of indiscriminate information, the widespread use of computers in schools is harmful to American schooling. While there are certainly means by which skilled teachers can periodically utilize computers for worthy purposes, replacing teachers with computers as the focus of instruction damages a school’s ability to produce whole people – mature intellectually, socially, morally, and spiritually. Large-scale computer use has the same detrimental effects in Christian schools as well. The purpose of Christian education is “the transformation of the person. This goal is not limited to either the cognitive, the affective, or the volitional, but encompasses all three – knowing, feeling, and doing.”[43] Allowing computers – which endorse anti-intellectuality, immediate gratification, and shortcuts to easy grades and also inhibit the teacher’s ability to disciple students in spiritual matters – to dominate instruction is a sure way to guarantee the failure of Christian schools in achieving this purpose. Additionally, even if the sole purpose of computer use in schools were to increase student achievement and learning, there still exists “no solid proof computers boost students’ learning.”[44] Extensive computer use in schools has not only damaged our schools’ ability to produce complete humans able to make educated, thoughtful evaluations about every realm of life, but they have even failed to deliver on its most basic promise: that of improving student learning. Schools, once a place where students learned from teachers in large-group settings about what it means to be a complete citizen and human being, have since become institutions which exist to develop in students an array of technical and information-access skills while abandoning the essential practices of gregariousness, sustained thought, and finding a purpose for education beyond the thickness of one’s wallet. Only by uninstalling computers from the core of instruction and restoring the teacher as the leader of the classroom can schools ever hope to begin cultivating whole individuals; otherwise, schools will continue to reduce students to mere cogs that exist purely for the benefit of the Economy.

Bibliography

Barker, Bruce O. "The Internet Can Improve Education." In The Internet: Opposing Viewpoints, edited by Helen Cothran, 86. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2002.

Berry, Wendell. “Feminism, the Body, and the Machine.” In Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry, edited by Norman Wirzba, 65-80. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2002.

Cuban, Larry. Oversold and Underuse: Computers in the Classroom. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001.

Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society. Translated by John Wilkinson. New York: Vintage Books, 1964.

Gannett, Lynn. “Teaching for Learning.” In Christian Education: Foundations for the Future, edited by Robert E. Clark, Lin Johnson, and Allyn K. Sloat, 105-119. Chicago: Moody Press, 1991.

Kent, Todd W., and Robert F. McNergney. Will Technology Really Change Education? From Blackboard to Web. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 1999.

Kushner, David. "The Internet Has Not Improved Education." In The Internet: Opposing Viewpoints, edited by Helen Cothran, 91. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2002.

Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.

–. “Virtual Students, Digital Classroom.” In Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Educational Issues, 10^th ed., edited by James W. Noll, 329-335. Guilford, Connecticut: Dushkin/McGraw-Hill, 1999.

Snider, James H. “Education Wars: The Battle Over Information-Age Technology.” In Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Educational Issues, 10^th ed., edited by James W. Noll, 322-328. Guilford, Connecticut: Dushkin/McGraw-Hill, 1999.

Stoll, Clifford. High-Tech Heretic: Reflections of a Computer Contrarian. New York: Anchor Books, 1999.

Unger, Harlow G. Encyclopedia of American Education, 2^nd ed. New York: Facts on File, 2001.

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[1] Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 184-185.

[2] Larry Cuban, Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 13.

[3] Cuban, op. cit., 4-7.

[4] Op. cit., 174.

[5] Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, trans. John Wilkinson (New York: Vintage Books, 1964), 348.

[6] Ibid, 349.

[7] Ibid, 221.

[8] Cuban, op. cit., 193.

[9] Ibid, 7.

[10] Ibid, 8.

[11] Postman, op. cit., 174.

[12] Postman, op. cit., 185-186.

[13] Todd W. Kent and Robert F. McNergney, Will Technology Really Change Education? From Blackboard to Web (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 1999), 5.

[14] Bruce O. Barker, "The Internet Can Improve Education," in The Internet: Opposing Worldviews, ed. Helen Cothran (San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2002), 86.

[15] Encyclopedia of American Education, 2^nd ed. (New York: Facts on File, 2001), s.v. “computers.”

[16] James H. Snider, “Education Wars: The Battle Over Information-Age Technology,” in Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Educational Issues, 10^th ed., ed. James W. Noll (Guilford, Connecticut: Dushkin/McGraw-Hill, 1999), 323.

[17] Kent and McNergney, op. cit., 30.

[18] Kent and McNergney, op. cit., 27.

[19] Ibid, 28-29.

[20] Wendell Berry, “Feminism, the Body, and the Machine” in Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry, ed. Norman Wirzba (Berkeley: Counterpoint Press, 2002), 74.

[21] Cuban, op. cit., 167-168.

[22] Kent and McNergney, op. cit., 5.

[23] Clifford Stoll, High-Tech Heretic: Reflections of a Computer Contrarian (New York: Anchor Books, 1999), 21.

[24] Op. cit., 17.

[25] Kent and McNergney, op. cit., 56.

[26] Stoll, op. cit., 199.

[27] Ibid, 146.

[28] Ibid, 122.

[29] Stoll, op. cit., 20.

[30] Bruce O. Barker, "The Internet Can Improve Education," in The Internet: Opposing Viewpoints” ed. Helen Cothran (San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2002), 86.

[31] Neil Postman, “Virtual Students, Digital Classroom” in Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Educational Issues, 10^th ed., ed. James W. Noll (Guilford, Connecticut: Dushkin/McGraw-Hill, 1999), 334.

[32] Ibid, 333.

[33] Op. cit., 11.

[34] Ibid, 12.

[35] Stoll, op. cit., 76.

[36] Ibid, 12.

[37] Encyclopedia of American Education, op. cit., s.v. “computers.”

[38] Postman, Technopoly, op. cit., 62.

[39] Kent and McNergney, op. cit., 5.

[40] Postman, “Virtual Students, Digital Classroom”, op.cit., 332.

[41] Stoll, op. cit., 13.

[42] Ibid, 67.

[43] Lynn Gannett, “Teaching for Learning” in Christian Education: Foundations for the Future, ed. Robert E. Clark, Lin Johnson, and Allyn K. Sloat (Chicago: Moody Press, 1991), 114.

[44] David Kushner, "The Internet Has Not Improved Education," in The Internet: Opposing Viewpoints”, ed. Helen Cothran (San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2002), 91.

Vouchers & the Death of Private Education

Recently I had the privilege of hearing one of my friends allude to his opinion that school vouchers are a good thing to have. Allow me to thoroughly debunk this idea by describing how school vouchers will efficiently annihilate private (and Christian) schools.

For those of you who are shaky on what vouchers are, here’s a summary. The program centers around the idea that one has a right to the best education possible. It also assumes (rightly) that some schools are failing to provide adequate, let alone satisfactory, academic program. Thus, parents of students in these schools blame the schools for their child’s failure and insist that their child be able to attend “better” schools. Hence, the school voucher program. Given that every person must attend school up to a certain age by law (varies by state), the voucher program allows parents to take their money that would be used to pay for their failing school and use it to pay for their schooling elsewhere, public or private.

Before I get to vouchers, I want to challenge the idea that we have a “right” to the best education possible, or even a state-administered education at all. The constitution neglects to mention education. Thus, the responsibility falls on the individual states to decide what to do with education. In essence, states can decide to have nothing to do with education or everything to do with education, but it is their choice and it was never meant to be a federal issue. The point is that we are not guaranteed an education, or even a good education, by the constitution.

Federal involvement in schools, including legislature, court decisions, and the appointment of the Department of Education as a cabinet level position, has yet to reap any benefits. Schools have never rebounded to the level they were at in 1963 as demonstrated by SAT math and verbal scpuores (even after the test was renormed in 1995 to make scores higher). Students leaving our schools today also leave with less knowledge of our country and the values for which it stood. To make matters worse, instead of repealing the unsuccessful attempts the government as made at correcting American education, they reform, either with money, fancy laws that seem noble (No Child Left Behind), or with politicky phrases that lie and try to tell us that we are among the most (and best) educated people in the world. The point of all of this is to show that vouchers were just the next bad federal reform in line.

School vouchers will mark the end of private education (and more importantly, of Christian private education). It is verifiable by any recent study that private schools are better than public schools. While some may debate me on this issue, let it rest to say that students in private schools, at the very least, perform better on the SAT and ACT.[1] When vouchers become a national commodity, parents will opt their children out of “failing” public schools and into superior private schools. Private schools, having an influx of students, will have to, as the cliché puts it, expand or die. Expansion will come in the form of increased teaching staff and administrators, and most importantly, more facilities. To afford these facilities (outside a generous outside donation), private schools will need to obtain loans. As time goes on, more public schools will be abandoned for the promised land of private schools. Private schools will experience a short period of prosperity due to the increased number of schools and students attending them.

Here’s the lynchpin point: Eventually, enough people in power will not welcome the idea of allowing federal/state funds (which is what vouchers are) going into religiously affiliated schools because of its “obvious” breach of church and state.[2] So what will happen? In order to not have federal money going into private, religious institutions, legislators will force schools either to become secular (that is, no longer religiously affiliated) or not accept voucher money. No matter what happens, the schools lose. Either the schools denounce that in which they believe or they die since they would be unable to repay the loans they took out to expand (apart from generous donations).

Here are some counterarguments I know are floating out there:

1. When private, religious schools can no longer accept federal money while remaining true to their faith, they can simply raise the cost of tuition. This is exactly what the people behind vouchers want to happen. Vouchers, proclaiming the right to the best education, also proclaims that this best education also ought to be as cheap as possible. The rising cost of tuition will cause parents to move their children either back to public schools or to another, cheaper, private, voucher-accepting, secular school.

2. Another counterargument will claim that religious private schools can simply drop their religious affiliation but maintain their mode of operations, including expression of faith. The one who argues this point has too much faith in government. Trust me, when federal money pours into recently unaffiliated private schools, the government will earmark it in such a way that no expression of faith on school grounds will be permissible.

Even if these two counterarguments hold true, they still do not get at the overall purpose of vouchers: to make private schools public. It’s taking the better education of the few and giving it away to the many. And we obviously cannot and should not allow this to happen because public education in America has failed us.

Don’t believe me? Our schools today are full of disinterested students from disinterested and often broken families who have lost all sense of purpose in education (and life!) outside the future material wealth they will acquire as a result of them enduring thirteen years of school. Society demands young people of character in its workplaces but fails to acknowledge what exactly good character is. Schools promote a postmodern view of moral relativity, relying on programs such as Values Clarification, which shamelessly admits that there is no Right and that any student’s guess at Right is just as good as the teacher’s. Addicted to the dancing colors of the television and the Internet, students expect to be entertained and amused instead of being instructed in the great subjects of the past. This fact alone has led to an entire shift in educational philosophy from teacher-centered learning to student-discovery “learning.” Not only do students today “discover” their own morality, they also “discover” their own education. Since students are in charge of their own learning, they decide what they will allow themselves to learn based on how it will best serve them in the future, not how much it will better them as American citizens. So the student who wants to learn about the business world will tune out in Western Civilization class and the scientist-to-be will only study enough Shakespeare and Bunyan to perform adequately on the test.

I would almost be so bold as to suggest that all of the ailments of American education can be summarized in one word: Progress. Death to the past and present! We have learned all we need to learn from the past; now is the time to move forward! History isn’t applicable anymore. Only a handful of people ever need to know Mathematics, not me. What does someone writing a book hundreds of years ago have to say to me today; I’ll gather all I need to know from the TV and movies. The morality of my grandfather is not for me; I will create my own! Look at the previous paragraph and try to prove that progress is not tied to each and every of the listed failures of American compulsory schooling.

But that was all just a parenthesis to my main thesis, and that is this: If private schools become public, we will have lost all hope for American education. As just described, public schools have failed us. Why would we want to bring private schools, which are clearly superior, down to the level of public schools, which are failing and deteriorating? This is truly the establishment of equality in its cruelest form: if public schools cannot be made better, then the next best thing is to make private schools worse. And when private schools become increasingly public, its students will inevitably achieve (and become) like public school students.

Though not having done too much research on the matter, I would be inclined to suggest that we ought not to make all private schools public, but make all public schools private. Don’t charge a property tax and keep the government out of education. This means that the government will have to do a lot of repealing, but frankly, it would be quite easy.

There is much more to say on this matter, and I admittedly am not very organized in my argument, but I hope that this at least has made the reader think about the perils of school vouchers. I wish readers will comment on this matter, not so much on my proper bashing of public schools, but rather on the argument of vouchers killing private religious institutions in the long run.

As a postscript, I anticipate someone will point out that I (or they) graduated from public school and do not exhibit all the ill effects of public schools. True; not everyone leaves public school as a monster (massive use of hyperbole). I submit that the best way to combat the ugliness of public schools is with involved parents. In fact, parents ought to be more influential in their child’s education than the schools themselves…but that is another topic.

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[1] Notice the phrase “at the very least.” Better performance on standardized tests is about the last thing I would care about in a school because those tests have a very utilitarian purpose. I use this argument simply because it is the easiest to prove and will enable me to proceed with my argument without the reader arguing that private schools are not necessarily superior to public schools.

[2] It is not a breach of Church and State. The Founding Fathers did not include this phrase in the constitution and allowing money to go into religiously affiliated schools does not constitute a breach of the federal “establishment of religion” clause. Those who think schools, public or private, can have nothing to do with religion should reexamine the constitution before making such a ridiculous claim.

Response: Harvard Initiates the Fall of American Higher Education

Ahoy mates. I've finally received some feedback on something I have written, and as promised, I will defend (or amend) my arguments in light of this response. So here goes:

Story One:
The first source of criticism over my post was as follows:

"You describe multiculturalism as being tolerant, including and granting equality to distinct cultural groups, and then state that it is"obviously wrong." Are you implying that tolerance, inclusion, and equality are wrong?"

There's a lot to chew on in those statements, so I guess I will just clarify my argument in hopes that it will answer the question. What I meant to say explicitly about Multiculturalism is that it is, above all, relativist; Multiculturalism does not believe in truth - in a right and a wrong. But it does have its dogmas, the most prominent of which is tolerance.

Now I know it's difficult to go on the record anywhere and state that I am against tolerance, because that makes me out to be a bigot (and I would like to think that I am not one), but I will say that I am against tolerance in the way that Multiculturalists have perverted the word. Webster's Dictionary defines tolerance as having "sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one's own." Multiculturalist tolerance goes beyond sympathy and demands acceptance. Multiculturalist thinkers would say that I would be intolerant if I was not fond of a community or culture that based itself upon prostitution, for example. They would require me to believe "Well, if prostitution works for them, then that's fine by me." But I would be demonstrating true, Websterarian tolerance by simply thinking that we should not immediately destroy the society. I am sympathetic towards the people, but I do not agree with their beliefs, just as the Christian is called to hate the sin but not the man.

Multiculturalists are quick to call Christians intolerant because they do not accept other views. But wouldn't Christianity fail as a distinct religion if its members did not all hold to the same virtues? To call Christians intolerant (by their definition of the word) is to call Christians Christian! Or to call Buddhists Buddhist! To be a person with a soul, do you not have to make decisions of right and wrong? For to me, if you are a person who believes in nothing at all, you are worse off than the man who believes in the wrong thing because you at least have made some "moral" decisions in your life.

And this is what the Multiculturalists have done by making the world a cultural smorgasbord: created people with no convictions at all. Sure, they will have opinions on education and politics and economic policy, but they are mere talking heads with no foundation greater than themselves.

As such, in response you another argument you made, we can consider the ideas of other cultures and study them as long as it is not done relativistically. There are things that are right and wrong (such as a society that bases itself on prostitution or exploitation of the poor, etc). It is also important, again, not to throw the baby out with the bathwater and simply denounce those societies because of their sins. I would argue, though, that since we live in America we ought to primarily study American history rather than concern ourselves with history of places we will most likely never have to deal with. Parenthetically, I realize that this opens me up to the counter-argument that "the world is becoming more globalized and soon American history will become the world's history, etc.". I'll save globalization for another day (or days) as it, too, is something I am completely opposed to. If you want to read a book that probably has a lot more wisdom on globalization than I do, read Joseph Pierce's Small is Still Beautiful. Also for a much more detailed argument of Multiculturalism, please read The Disuniting of America by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. as he has a jolly good argument in that book.

The critic also wrote that "The history of America is in fact found in Africa and Latin America and the East, since American citizens come from all over the world." This statement almost refutes itself. The great men of American history did not come from Africa, Latin America or the East, they were from the West (namely, Europe). To my knowledge, none of the Founding Fathers were from these regions and no President has been from those regions. Even so, today's culture is not shaped on culture from those areas.

Admittedly, I do not have a strong response to the critique that Multiculturalism and Scientism are "fruits of Western thinking." I first wanted to say that these ideas are a result of the globalizing trend that is prevalent throughout the world, but by good bud Wendell Berry himself once said, "Global thinking is not possible," so I have to abandon that argument. What I do know is that Multiculturalism and Scientism have ultimately stemmed from Romantacism and the Enlightenment, both time periods which doubted the existence of God and so sought to fill the void with science and reasoning or with human emotion and intuition, both of which, then followed unilaterally, cannot produce a healthy philosophy (or at the very least, for my sake, one that fits with a Christian worldview). But, again, I still cannot escape the fact that these are largely fruits of the West, except by making a familiar argument. The West is what has made America great. I shouldn't have to defend that, but I'll just throw out simpliest example, that of religious freedom. But the West has also produced bad ideas, namely, Multiculturalism, Scientism, Post-Modernism, etc. I cannot, then, fully endorse the West. But I can endorse that which agrees with my convictions, and that I do.

Stories Two and Three:

The critic writes:

As a counter-argument, I guess the ACLU doesn't like the bibles and the courses in the schools because it violates the separation of church and state. And even though the students can choose not to participate, because the state can't play favorites, it would have to allow every religion (even the crazy ones) to give out their writings and potentially have elective courses.

Church and state is a funny issue. Here is all the Constitution says concerning religion and the government:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

I'm sure books have been written about this very statement, but I'll try to keep it to less than a book. The law is simply that the government will not make a law establishing a religion as the official religion of the state. I realize that Court decisions have redefined this by ensuring religious topics are no longer taught in public (federal) schools and trying to extract "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance.

Regardless, one of my professors at school gave me a copy of the Students' Bill of Rights. The Students' Bill of Rights outlines the religious rights guaranteed under constitutional and federal law that students and teachers have while in public schools. The list may surprise you:

1. The Right to meet with other religious students.
   The Equal Access Act allows students the freedom to meet on campus for the purpose of discussing religious issues.
2. The Right to identify your religious beliefs through signs and symbols.
   Students are free to express their beliefs through signs and symbols. (Including Christian t-shirts, etc.)
3. The Right to talk about your religious beliefs on campus.
   Freedom of speech is a fundamental right mandated in the Constitution and does not exclude the school yard.
4. The Right to distribute religious literature on campus.
   Distributing literature on campus may not be restricted simply because it is religious.
5. The Right to pray on campus.
   Students may pray alone or with others so long as it does not disrupt school activities or is not forced on others.
6. The Right to carry or study your Bible on campus.
   The Supreme Court has said that only state directed Bible reading is unconstitutional.
7. The Right to do research papers, speeches, and creative projects with religious themes.
   The First Amendment does not forbid all mention of religion in public schools.
8. The Right to be exempt.
   Students may be exempt from activities and class content that contradict their religious beliefs.
9. The Right to celebrate or study religious holidays on campus.
   Music, art, literature, and drama that have religious themes are permitted as part of the curriculum for school activities if presented in an objective manner as a traditional part of the cultural and religious heritage of the particular holiday.
10. The Right to meet with school officials.
    The First Amendment to the Constitution forbids Congress to make any law that would restrict the right of the people to petition the Government (school officials).

Some places have attempted to legislate laws that would permit teachers and students to further express their religious convictions under the banner that their statements are not the official views of the school district. Here's one example of a town in Fort Bend, Texas.

In short, the church and state debate isn't much of a debate. As long as the governing body (in this case, the school board) does not explicitly affiliate itself with a particular religion, any of the above things are permissible in schools. Both school districts, though they have histories with law suits, still stand today because they have obeyed the law. With the specific example of poor Jane Doe being forced to accept a Bible on school grounds, it is completely legal for this to happen (the only thing that could have been illegal is if she was forced to take it, but that would be awfully difficult to prove).

So when the critic writes: "[the state] would have to allow every religion (even the crazy ones) to give out their writings and potentially have elective courses," he is absolutely correct. But it will never happen because decisions of curriculum (especially curriculum of electives) is created and approved by local school boards and it would be hard to find a community school board that would allow for "crazy religions" to be taught in their schools. As such, Catholic public schools still stand and school districts with Christian-sympathies (though not officially affiliated) continue to teach our students the truths they desperately need to hear.

Thank you for the comment and allowing me to firm up my arguments.