The Future of Computers in Classrooms

In response to Larry Cuban’s article, “Public School Teachers Using Machines in the Next Decade,” I would just like to say:

The question of why information technologies have not been as successfully integrated into schooling as they have been in every other major institution in our society seems to be at the heart of Cuban’s inquiry into the future of computers in schools. As he notes, public expectations for schools differ substantially from other institutions, such as business, and there is considerable resistance to changing the status quo of teaching, especially in an era of reform that is reductionist rather than progressive.

Moreover, teaching with innovative technology conflicts with popularly held beliefs about what constitutes good teaching; beliefs that are anchored in our society by a generation that grew up with a relative deprivation of information of technology. However, the same constituency aspires for greater productivity in education of the masses, and thus desires the results that technology-based educational reforms could bring about.

The preservationist doctrine seems to deny the necessity for changes to the underlying structures of schools in order to facilitate greater productivity, even though the basic structures of every other social institution (banking, commerce, communications, travel) have been completely altered by the advent of information technology. I think Cuban is right then when he points out that, “The nature of education must inevitably adapt to the nature of work in society” (p. 8).

It seems clear that the potential for greater efficiencies through technology will eventually be made plausible through, what Cuban calls, an evolutionary scenario of slowly altering school structures through creative uses of technology. Hybrid schools, those that use a combination of time-tested methods and new technologies, have the potential to help “bring schools more in sync with the technological imperatives of the larger society,” (Cuban, p. 11) and thus are a model for the future.