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The Flickering Mind
What's bad: The first 350 pages of The Flickering Mind are as depressing as anything I've read. In case after case, Oppenheimer describes politicians' and educators' mindless acceptance of claims by technology pundits and technology companies. The sheer number of tax dollars poured into worthless software and soon-to-be-obsolete hardware is appalling The fact that so few lessons have been learned in 20 years beggars the imagination.
Those are my words, not the author's. The book's examples are laid out in very plain, factual language. No raving rants, no wild tangents. Just record after record, study after study, interview after interview.
Oppenheimer has researched the book by interviewing teachers, students, former students, educational software employees, district policymakers and government officials across the U.S. People with hands-on experience using things like distance-learning systems, CD-ROM-based textbooks, math and reading games, multimedia software, student laptops, school intranets, web-based research papers, and dozens of pieces of educational technology.
A recurring theme in these interviews is how computers either make formerly easy things harder (like classroom discussion), and hard things avoidable (students who know how to copy-paste don't have to construct sentences).
"One English teacher could readily tell which of her students essays were conceived on a computer. "They don't link ideas," the teacher said. "They just write one thing, and then they write another one, and they don't seem to see or develop the relationships between them."
The many interviews give The Flickering Mind a personal feel, and make the reading easier. In many ways, it's like a record of the author's travels from school to school. But one of the book's great strengths is Oppenheimer's unwillingness to rely on anecdotal evidence. Much of the book is devoted to analyzing studies of technology's impact in schools. A good chunk of these studies are commissioned by firms that sell educational software. Not surprisingly, they tend to be shallow and nonscientific. Many pages are spent pointing out flaws in this research. This becomes important when Oppenheimer turns the same critical eye on studies which support his own conclusions. An interesting sub-topic of the book is how very few truly objective educational technology studies exist.
All the evidence against computers as useful learning tools wouldn't be so alarming if computers didn't cost so much. But educators seem especially blind to the continual costs of staying on the technology bandwagon. There are two faces to this problem, and The Flickering Mind addresses both. The first is schools cutting faculty and programs in order to purchase hardware and software. The second is local and national governments granting subsidies and to companies who promise to assist schools with technology. In both cases, taxpayers foot the bill.
The Flickering Mind relies mainly on educators' own criteria for determining how technology helps learning (can the kids read, write, and do math?) But it also takes time to puncture the oft-recycled dogma that society has a shortage of graduates with high-tech skills:
"When employers who were fretting about this gap were asked what skills mattered to them, this is what they said: Most important of all is a deep and broad base of knowledge. "Want to get a job using information technology to solve problems? Know something about the problems that need to be solved." This statement reflected the sentiments of nearly two thirds of the Information Technology Association of America's members. Following far behind this priority was "hands-on experience" with technical work, which less than half the nation's IT managers considered critical (Most apparently felt perfectly capable of teaching those skills on the job.)
What's good:
All is not Luddite doom-and-gloom. The Flickering Mind is careful to highlight the areas where computer technology helps kids learn. Many schools do benefit from computers--as long as the computers are in central labs (not in the classroom), and not networked. One school has a senior-level class in which students build the computers used in the labs. Programming classes are valued by upperclassmen with an interest in technology careers. Some educators have made adjustments, like the teacher who removed all but a single-size font from the machines "so the students can write instead of wasting time adjusting the text".
The final third of the book is an uplifting counterpart to the ignorance and frustration described in the first two thirds. Oppenheimer gives details of visits to several schools which buck the trend of embracing technology as an end in itself. They use computers, but not in the class:
"In an aging brick building on New York's Upper East Side, a dozen teenagers of varying ages, half of whom look like street kids, pull their desks into a circle as their teacher distributes several thick handouts. "You're killing trees," one student complains."
"Yes," says the teacher. "I'm killing lots of trees"
After the students have spent fifteen to twenty minutes with the handouts, discussion begins. The debate is constant and heated. Whenever the dialog bogs down or goes off course, the teacher quickly interrupts. "I want to hear some pieces of evidence here!" he insists.
A university professor contrasted former students of this school with others she'd met: "I've had the experience of asking students a question and there's a one-sentence answer. And it's not a question of shyness or dumbness, but the person hasn't learned how to develop an idea. How to make a statement and then qualify and describe and give examples and illustrations. Each and every one of these people could do that."
Conclusion
The Flickering Mind is one of the most well-researched books I've read. It is well worth checking out from your library. It's even more worth buying, because you'll likely be re-reading it and lending it to your friends.
You can purchase the The Flickering Mind from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Methinks the submitter doesn't speak with educators and politicians all that often. It's simply absurd to suggest that your typical educator or politician blindly believes that computers are the solution to America's education woes.
One wonders about the reviewer's credentials if this is how he frames the debate surrounding the use of technology in our schools. This is a complex issue with no clear answers--not some good vs. evil Joes 'n' Cobra brawl.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
What I don't understand is that schools spend thousands and thousands of dollars to upgrade technology, but they still don't have any teachers that are worth a damn or teachers that are severly underpaid. Seems like schools also forget the fact that that computer is hard to use if there is no decent desk to put it on. I've had classes that use desks that were here when the college was founded. There's not enough room on the writing surface for single sheet of paper. WTF?
[ ]
... in the same way that books are.
I mean, if you don't know how to read, them thing 're useless.
-pyrrho
Author and submitter sound like they're a bit grumpy over this whole computer fad thing. "Darn kids and their technology! Why, when I was your age, I had to write my reports on *paper*... with a *pencil*!!..."
C'mon... the only success stories in schools were where the comps were not in the classroom, and weren't networked (how do you print??) sounds fishy to me, and smacks of some serious anti-tech bias, IMHO.
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
A computer is a tool. A well prepared mind can make a computer do amazing things, just like a well prepared mind can make a hammer and chisel do amazing things. However, an unprepared mind will just turn the block of stone into a pile of dust. Let's focus on preparing the minds before giving them all the tools. Like the teacher removing all the fonts from the computer, we need to get people to think about what they're doing, not how it looks or is perceived. Reading, discussion, and experimentation are ways to do this, and while they can be done on a computer, the complexity of the system gets in the way. People learn how to use the computer to prepare their minds, when it should be the other way around.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
of course, artists create art whether or not they are in art class. whereas no-one will build the next generation of robot soldiers unless the market has a glut of engineers and scientists to burn through at half-wages.
b-i-t, t-e-r, & j-a-d-e-d... I'm so pissed... I'm so pissed...
But you can actually structure your essays better when you can first type out ideas and chunks of sentences, and then restructure until they form a coherent, logical progression.
Unless you like to handwrite endless drafts, handwritten work would generally be more confuse.
Now, really, perhaps these are nonlinear times. I have a class with a philosophy professor who keeps on saying that mind is hypertextual, and he`s fascinated with the possibilites of nonlinear argumentation. Not John Negroponte or some hypermedia freak, a 60-years-old Medieval Philosopher scholar whose idea of a fascinating subject is the Summa Teologica.
I gotta say I learned all my english and all my french on the net (it's not that bad, check my post history), and have generally learned to write better and been more exposed to intellectual, structured debate than I'd ever be without it. Moreover, I've had contact with all these scholars from around the world who research subjects that interested me at one point, and learned about many research areas I didn't even know that existed.
Of course, I've also seen a lot of freak pr0n, but we were discussing education, weren't we?
You need good people teaching good things to good people to get good results. We barely pay the teachers, and so we scare away lots of good people from teaching. Our curriculums are weak and far away from reality. We raise our kids without a parent at home using the TV/computer as a surrogate and feed them non-stop hyperactivity chow, and so they are more or less unteachable.
Computers won't fix this situation. Maybe if we fixed the other 3 problems, they would make a good situation better.
Does it hurt to hear them lying? Was this the only world you had?
I was just thinking about this. Let me tell a long story. I'm a network guy and kind of known as a PC/Server guy. I get asked a lot of questions that take me about 10 minutes with Google to find answers to. Now I'll date myself when I was in debate in High School we used to spend hours at the local Uni digging through their stacks to find information and stuff to build debate cases with. This was both fun and I learned a lot about research. I think this accounts for why I can find answers on the web that some of the kids I work with who never really had to do research without computers can not.
Kind of like once you learn math without a calculator you can then do amazing things very quickly when given the tool. But if you never learn math without the calculator you are stuck being able to not do any of those really amazing things the tool can help you do.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
I am finishing a masters in Ed. (Computers and Ed. Technology) and this book was a big part of my thesis. I have been involved in my school's technology for years. This book should be required reading for every princpal and teacher. Sadly, he exposes the "education industrial complex" (paraphrasing Eisenhower) and highlights many problems with our education system. I could go on, but that's my thesis. Schools need to go back to the basics, readin', writin', 'rithmetic. Literacy and critical thinking should be the goals of school, and if the kids never even touch a computer in school, they won't miss a thing. Though I do believe there should be a technology component, where kids do learn basic computer skills.
I might also suggest Jane Healy's "Failure to Connect" and Clifford Stoll's "Silicon Snake Oil". Please take it from me, I am a high school history teacher, and I see this problem as wide scale.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
>He talked about how software packages make the outrageous claim that they can "make learning fun," when actual learning takes self-discipline, hard work, and effective human teachers.
Cats and dogs can't survive on instinct alone. Both need to have learned hunting skills. How do they acquire them? They play.
Play is how mammals learn. They expend enormous energy in play. If play weren't a vital function then non-playing creatures would have taken over the world through sheer efficiency.
"Self-discipline, hard work, and effective human teachers" could be a description of what happens when humans "play" soccer.
Learning *is* fun, inherently. We're programmed for it. Any healthy young child is constantly exploring, taking things apart, and asking "why?".
The great mystery of our educational system is how it has made learning seem like a chore.
Distance learning, offshore development, outsourcing, everything; can all be traced to a neglected education system in the U.S.
We don't pay our teachers much, so most of our intelligent people are going on to other jobs where their brains get them more money. Teaching could became a coveted profession like being a Doctor or a Lawyer.
But instead, we're paying our teachers low wages, and chipping away at our long standing scientific advantage over the rest of the world.
Who needs to pay for this? Every citizen, but those with more must contribute more. The problem is that well-off citizens can just send their own kids to private school -- screw the rest of the kids -- and then vote at the school district meetings for minimal budgets, so their school taxes go down. In some districts, housing and school taxes are so expensive that by buying a house there you are essentially paying for private school for yuor kids, and poor people cannot afford to get into that community.
Vouchers are not the answer, as all they do is take money away from the school that need it the most, and give it to schools that are already rich enough to provide a good education. It just serves to further separate the rich from the poor.
What we need is for washington to put its foot down and say "Enough!"
Listen, those of you who've made it big in America: It's not just your own hard work that got you where you are in life, it's your education, your community, your country, and your fellow citizens that made this environment that allowed you to have a chance at all. So stop whining and help out your fellow man; pay 1% more in taxes, so that poor kids can go to better schools, and lead better lives. Heck, you'll probably make up the lost taxes in the money you save by not being robbed or carjacked by some kid who dropped out of his drug-laden junior high school to become a thief.
I'm spent.
$8.95/mo web hosting
I attended a "alternative" high school for a bit, and nearly everything was computerized. The materials were done over NovaNet, and specifically say "These are to be used for reference, and not as a replacement for the book".
The books were not available, and we were quite literally set up to fail. It was impossible to even pass without taking tons of notes (I have my library barcode number from when I was 5, all my credit cards, my blockbuster card, and discount card #s memorized, so it's not my memorization skills at fault). This was the school for failures, too.
As for why I was there, a bad case of ADHD - I literally couldn't pass my classes. It was not because of tests, but because I couldn't focus long enough to finish the homework.
Granted, I have not read this book myself.
However, the problem isn't that we have computers in schools or *gasp* networked computers.
The problem is simply that most educators are (and I speak by experience both from an academic and a tech-support perspective, everything from kindergarten to grad school to a retail computer store that sold consulting and support to schools) incapable of properly instructing people to use computers.
Face it. I'd venture to say that most educators (and almost certainly most politicians) have _not_ grown up with computers, but are rather attempting to synthesize computer technology into their policies and curricula. This is a good thing, but they simply don't have the _feel_ of it; this is something that comes with vast amounts of experience with computer technology.
Handwriting essays? Give me a break; I wrote my grade-school essays on IBM XTs and printed them out on dot matrix printers whenever allowed. When it wasn't allowed, I wrote them on the XT and then copied them onto paper after they're done.
I would venture to say that few things suck harder than drafting essays by hand. Don't like a paragraph? You're screwed - rewrite. Don't like that paragraph? You're screwed again - rewrite. Not to mention that I can type ~100wpm, and I can only handwrite about...I dunno, 30-40wpm if that. Better, my hands aren't being contorted around some pen, but rather drifting in a pseudo-natural position above a keyboard. This hurts so much less, and I can write longer without needing to take a break while being more productive. I fail to see a problem.
A lot of people are scared of technology, but the US education system has far bigger problems (lack of funding, lack of instructors, etc) that are to blame for poor academic performance.
To add a last little rant, the network thing is idiotic. The future, and the past, have always been about networks. You're teaching your students programming, but they don't have any idea of how to do network programming? You're teaching them how to use computers, but god forbid they learn any of the _important_ facets of network use, like basic networking hygeine (virus scanners, firewall use, maybe how to do spam filtering) that will help to slow down future network chokage.
Ugh. I just find myself having a somewhat visceral reaction to this, considering that I literally grew up with computers (since I was 5) and _in spite of_ crappy education systems, I find myself in possession of a master's degree and a high-tech, managerial job.
Pardon any organizational or grammatical flaws; this is off the top of my head.
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I have watched my children being taught with computers in the classroom, computers in a separated "lab", and computers at home. Much of what the author mentions is very real to me.
The amount of time spent changing font types, font sizes, paragraph alignment, etc. is added time they could have avoided. Typing speed is a severe limiter for a long report -- and "teacher says it has to be typed/printed". Spell-check and grammar checks give an impression that they don't need to check their own work. I end up reviewing and marking the errors to make them correct them.
The educational software that they found so fun when they were younger fit into two categories - something they already knew and was easy OR something they hadn't learned yet and had to ask for help with. There was no actual instruction on HOW to do things - just little games using the skills.
========
Perhaps the scariest offshoot of this is how computers and software are implemented everywhere else (businesses and government). I've seen people spend hours working on a document that should have taken them 20 minutes. I've seen people who don't bother knowing how to speak or spell because the word-processor will do it for them. I work with people who claim the computer makes them more productive -- when I also know they spend more than 50% of their day online surfing sites completely unrelated to their job and get less done in the 50% they actually do work.
I'm not a Luddite by any means - I use my computers for maximizing my productivity. I even try to teach my children how to avoid the pitfalls by making them hand-write their rough drafts, research from books, and have a preset format that is used for all documents.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
Very funny examples, but as with most humor the grain of truth at the center of it is dealing with pain and suffering. In this case it's the suffering felt by the younger who listens to an older spouting slang by rote, and the pain felt by an older who's verbal faux pas kills a conversation like "it's da bomb".
Don't get me wrong, slang can truly be cross-generational and used in mixed age group situations but the speaker must use it freely and with the knowledge of a "second native tongue" at least. Such a knowledge takes time, living in the language as it were, and also a sense of when it's appropriate and useful to employ such modes as, for example; full slang, slang for effect, slang as accepted common usage, or no slang. While I'd say that teachers have a damn good chance of learning Slang as a Second Language, and may even be able to implement it to good effect in certain classroom situations, most parents and grandparents should take a cue from the endless comedy sketches featuring "them" using slang badly and not bother with anything that they don't pick up naturally.
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In the 20 years I have followed computers as educational tools, I have yet to see a single credible (ie: not vendor paid) study which showed a benefit from using computers to teach normal kids normal subjects.
Once we get into special areas, things change.
For instance there have been many studies which show huge benefits to below average kids, where the computer can be used to implement repetitive teaching techniques.
Similar positive results have been documented for fringe topics and above average students.
Most of these fringe areas can be reduced to the simple phenomena of the computer being used to make up for a teacher shortage. None of the studies I have seen argues that the results are different from what would have happened if sufficient teachers where available to implement the same amount of teaching.
But still not one single study have shown a consistent, tangible benefit for normal kids in the normal basic subjects {$native_language, math, science}
Many studies and reports have pointed out tangible damage.
Considering how much money has been spent, that is a pretty disturbing scientific basis.
Anectodal evidence is distributed slightly different: All the good news is about things which are going to happen. Once the computer have been rolled in, we practically never hear good news.
Combine this situation with the recent study out of Chicago which documented that for each hour of television toddlers watched per day, they had 10% higher risk of ADD at age 7, and we have a really disturbing situation at our hands.
Poul-Henning
PS: And as somebody who is old enough to have written a lot of text on a type-writer, I can personally attest that it makes you think a lot more about the text before you write.
Poul-Henning Kamp -- FreeBSD since before it was called that...
All Teachers are always paid a livable AND decent wage, everywhere.
That is as obviously false as your assertion that "Teachers are not paid a decent wage." You should have failed Logical Analysis. Instead, here you are, a voting adult. Please, God, spare me from living in a democracy! Give me our republic back!
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I haven't been actively involved in the education system for a while but I can agree with the reviewer's summary of the book author's findings... at least in spirit.
Someone has cited they had a difference of opinion with educating professionals in that computer skills are a primary need versus science and math. I feel similar to this slashdotter except that I feel stronger language skills are needed primarily in our education system.
If nothing else indicates it to me, it's all the people around me who have difficulty forming good sentences... and in fact, as another slashdotter related, an English teacher was able to tell if a writing was written on a computer rather than on paper based on style and [lack of] structure. I think it's a tremendous weakness we are developing on a national level.
Consider that for most humans, they language they speak is also the language of their thoughts. Their thoughts are encoded by their native language... mostly. If their coding skills are weak, then it seems natural to understand that their thinking skills will be similarly limited. A lack of language skills may very well link to a lack of many other skills which are needed in day to day life.
While I cannot deny that math and science skills are required for more advanced formations of the mind, but a stronger basis in language should be imparted than is already. The computer (as understood by lay people) isn't a thinking machine and isn't a teaching machine and certainly not yet a learning machine. I believe, however, that many people believe to the contrary.
I see it as a communications medium first and foremost and I think that's exactly how it should be used in our schools. I think blogs should be institutionalized and even graded and commented on by our teachers. If it were an on-going, ungraded process, it could prove to be invaluable for developing language skills... which is the encoding for most people's minds.
In fact, even shell scripting skills and knowledge of the unix filesystem are important skills in medicine. So, as others have pointed out, it's not so simple as saying we shouldn't emphasize computer skills.
Computers are good for automating what you understand. They are not a substitute for that understanding. In fact doing something with computers requires more understanding than without computers to just break even.
Computers are good for automating things that are tedious, monotonous, and repetitious. This works after you understand just what you are automating (which also defines what you are not automating.
An accurate summation of inaccurate numbers does not make an accurate sum, regardless of how much snake oil you buy.
these days you don't have Apple ][s in the classroom. you have wintels and hacking stuff is considerd a suspendable offence. Not to mention the first programing class in my school is offered in high school.
That's true. $44,000 in Arkansas is a lot different than $44,000 in New York.
On the other hand, a lot of professionals, managers, CEOS, engineers work more than 8 hour days too.
The problem isn't the computers or other technologies which are invading our schools. It's the environment of Academia, where bad teachers can't be punished, good teachers can't be rewarded, and there's no incentive beyond getting their students to get at least 800 on their SATs. Don't even get started on school boards, PTAs, and other obsticles to education. The rot is in the roots, and there's no saving this tree except to cut them out and replant.
I read a theory once which I believe to be the best idea to ever fix this system. Don't give teachers raises. Instead, upon entry into the work force each of their students would be tithed 1%-2% of their pretax salary, pooled together to then be divided equally among their old teachers. Theoretically, the better the teacher's job is done, the better their students will be paid, and thus the better teachers will be rewarded appropriately.
Rhetoric.
The benefit of a classical education.
-- Cerebus
I have actually taught computers to children. There are two roads to take, all others lead to the mistakes the book uncovers.
First, use the computer as the tool it is meant to be. Use it instead of a typewriter, for example. Nothing beats a computer for teaching children how to type. It's also good for administering automatic rote quizzes. Et cetera.
Oh, and as an information tool. It shouldn't replace actual books and encyclopedias, but it makes a great adjunct reference tool. But it's use in this area needs to be monitored, or it becomes merely another "glass teat". (you don't teach kids how to multiply by giving them a calculator, so why teach them how to research by giving them the web?)
Second, use it to teach computer science. As in programming. Logo is a great learning language. Children will learn algorithms and logical thinking. For older (or brighter) students you can use a "real" high level language like Java, Python or Ruby. Or set up a small LAN to learn about networks. Or learn HTML, CSS, and ECMAscript. The trick here is that you're teaching about the computer, instead of through the computer. Of course, this requires considerable knowledge on part of the teacher.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!